TikTok is Building Its Own Platform for AR Effects Creation To Broaden Its Visual Tools

TikTok is constantly expanding its platform and tools as it seeks to maximize on its current opportunity and establish its position as a vital platform within the broader social media market.

The platform's most recent advancement in this regard is the creation of its own AR effects studio, which, like Facebook and Snapchat, would allow AR developers to create their own effects for the platform, thereby broadening its pool of creative, engaging user choices.

TikTok's new 'Effect House,' as shown in this tweet provided by social media specialist Matt Navarra (via Sam Schmir), is presently open to chosen developers as part of the tool's early testing.

TikTok verified to TechCrunch that the new platform started earlier this month, while it is still in its early phases and is not yet available to the public. However, like Facebook's Spark AR platform and Snapchat's Lens Studio, the aim is to eventually release its Effects House platform to all creators, offering more capacity for people to create their own visual effects, using TikTok's numerous AR features to produce whole new user experiences inside the app.

Which is very reasonable. By making the tools available to more artists, you increase your chances of discovering the next big viral trend, which will drive even more people to the app. Limiting your creative capacity to internal teams limits your overall development prospects in this regard, and as TikTok strives to give a more engaging platform for artists so that they may monetize their work and generate more reliance on the app, this is another important step in securing those connections.

And making it easier to create effects may undoubtedly be a major motivator of in-app engagement. Last September, Facebook reported that over 400,000 augmented reality producers have published over 1.2 million effects on Facebook and Instagram through its Spark platform, with most of those effects receiving over a billion views. Moreover, Snapchat claims that over 200,000 creators have created over 2 million new Lenses in Snapchat's Lens Studio, which has also contributed to huge app engagement.

Based on the statistics, it appears to be a logical growth for TikTok to move in the same direction, which could open up a slew of new options to design new experiences and retain more TikTok users in-app for even longer as the company expands further in the field.

We'll keep you posted on any developments on this front.