TikTok Announces 'TikTok World' Showcase Event for September 28th

TikTok is the social media platform of the moment, with its steady flow of light-hearted video clips entertaining a growing number of individuals worldwide, with the app consistently dominating the download rankings and expanding to become a strong competitor for Facebook and Instagram.

So, what is the platform's next step? Can TikTok keep developing and evolve in accordance with user expectations, and become genuine, substantial, long-term competition for the industry's top players?

We'll get a better sense of this next month, when TikTok holds its first-ever 'TikTok World' showcase event.

The event will give us a taste of what's to come for TikTok, but the complete program schedule has yet to be announced.

It appears to be similar to Facebook's F8 and Snapchat's Partner Summit events, in which each platform provides an overview of their different initiatives and insights into what they're working on bringing to market.

TikTok is anticipated to provide new eCommerce capabilities and more integration possibilities to help companies connect with appropriate platform influencers for promotions. TikTok is also experimenting with longer-form video, which might open up new avenues, as well as enhanced live-streaming capability.

The platform is also developing a new AR Effect Studio tool, which will allow artists to create their own AR effects, which may be included in the TikTok World showcase.

With TikTok's parent company ByteDance previously acquiring VR headset maker Pico, they might give some early information on TikTok's initiatives for virtual reality. Is it possible that TikTok clips will merge into virtual form, with dancing crazes that you may engage in with your VR avatar, rather than standard video clips?

It is hard to anticipate how TikTok will handle this, but it is worth noting that the app is looking ahead to the next step to stay up to date with the changing trends.

As previously said, there isn't much to go on at this point, with the event merely open for early media registration.

We'll keep you posted on any new developments.