TikTok on Thursday announced the launch of a new feature called “Message Boards” that allows brands and creators to share one-to-many public messages to their followers. The message board is essentially TikTok’s own version of Instagram’s Broadcast Channels feature, which launched in 2023.
Similar to Instagram’s broadcast channels, only message board creators can post messages, and followers can leave emoji reactions. Bulletin boards support posting text, images, and videos.
This feature is rolling out to creators who are 18 years or older and have 50,000 followers.
The idea behind this feature is to make it easy for creators and businesses to build a community by sharing news and updates with their followers, posting exclusive content, and more. For example, creators can share updates on message boards rather than posting them through Stories or regular TikTok posts. This feature also allows accounts to send and promote their own content directly to their followers.
This release comes as no surprise, as TikTok was spotted testing this feature back in June.
TikTok said that during the beta phase, artists and musicians used message boards to share newly released music with their followers and invited them to pre-save for upcoming releases. Additionally, People magazine and Paris Saint-Germain used the feature to share news and updates.
“Like all content on TikTok, all content must adhere to our Community Guidelines, which we enforce through a combination of technology and human moderators,” TikTok said in a blog post. “Safety tools to mute, block, and report users and content are available within message boards to help keep our community safe and positive.”
Authors can start a discussion board by going to their inbox and selecting an option. You can change how your message boards appear by toggling the “Show on Profile” setting on or off. Additionally, you can choose a name for your bulletin board.
To join a message board, users click on the message board name below the creator’s bio on their profile. When followers choose to join a creator’s message board, they’ll receive a notification in their inbox every time that creator posts.
