TikTok Jump Mini-Apps Tackle The "Last Mile" Of Social Video

TikTok is adding mini apps to its videos, with TikTok Jump promising tiny applications and services for quizzes, recipes, tutorials, and more. The goal, TikTok says, is to fill in that "last mile" of learning after you've had your appetite whetted by a creator's video.

So, for example, you might be watching a TikTokker walk through a recipe they've been making recently, and then tap into a TikTok Jump app that shows you the ingredients, amounts, and steps to make it yourself. Alternatively, it could be one of the increasingly popular information TikToks, with a link to a TikTok Jump by Wikipedia with extra background detail.

The video-focused social network is partnering with a handful of providers which have already created Jump apps. That includes Whisk, Breathwrk, Wikipedia, Quizlet, StatMuse, and Tabelog. Betas have been in place since earlier in the year, and they'll be joined by other new providers including BuzzFeed, Jumprope, IRL, and WATCHA in the coming weeks.

What's interesting is how the Jump apps leverage both existing and original content. "Not only are TikTok creators using Whisk to add recipes previously published online," Nick Holzherr, Head of Whisk, explains, "they're also sharing unique TikTok recipes that don't exist anywhere else."

If all this is sounding oddly familiar, don't worry: it's just the ouroboros of social networking chewing down on its own tail again. In this case, TikTok Jump sounds a whole lot like Snap Minis, the little HTML5 applications that the company added to Snapchat midway through last year. They, too, were billed as tiny applications that paired easy creation with simple functionality

Like Snap Minis, TikTok Jump apps are created in HTML5, with the goal being ease of use. As well as information, there's support for interaction: you could have a Jump app that helps reserve a table, for example, order food.

Currently, TikTok is taking pre-applications for people and companies interested in creating Jump apps. That includes giving some sort of indication of a potential use-case, such as an existing TikTok video that could've benefited from a Jump addition. It's unclear how rapidly TikTok will be onboarding new providers at this stage, but you should be seeing Jump links showing up in the videos you watch soon, as more creators decide to embed them.