Unlike Facebook, TikTok did not mature by connecting friends to friends but by connecting people to their interests, rather than their real-life friends and family. In fact, today, most people refuse the app's request to upload contacts because TikTok is a place where they don't want to meet known people. That's why the company's decision last year to replace its useful Discover section with a dedicated Friends tab wasn't all that well-received. Now, it appears TikTok is having second thoughts on that one. The company confirms it is indeed piloting a test that replaces the Friends tab  with a new experience that's more in keeping with Instagram's Explore page.

The rollout, if it expands further, may tell us the company accepts what TikTok plays in the social app ecosystem — content-discovery, rather than keeping pace with real world friendships.

TikTok cited this objective when the company, last week, launched its new STEM-centric feed in the application, stating that "discovery is fundamental to the TikTok experience," and that it is always looking for ways to enable the community to discover "new and relevant content." The company also earlier this year launched an experiment that introduced a huge overhaul to the app's home screen as the platform expanded beyond its two primary feeds, For You and Following, and also included dedicated feeds focused on areas like sports, fashion, gaming, and food.

Both, though, mirror the challenges of discovery TikTok is now trying to move past because of the disappearance of the Discover tab. The Discover tab has served as a catch-up for people who did not open TikTok on a daily basis in the previous days on what is being discussed and created in content. In the tab, users could watch trending videos organized by hashtag, find new creators to follow and view some of the most viral videos. It also offered space for TikTok to promote various themes it wanted to touch on that week or month through larger, eye-catching banners at the top of the page.

Without the tab, it's a lot harder to see what's new on TikTok. Again, this leads to increased views for creator series where they'd summarize the trends of TikTok each week in videos. At least not yet, the Explore tab doesn't seem to offer the kind of summary experience that Discover did, but it certainly feels like a new way for the app to make content recommendations to end-users outside its usual feeds.

According to product intelligence firm Watchful.ai, the feature, which now makes a page available to users that can scroll and browse through videos in the grid form, is unclear how the recommendations of Explore will work or how directly related they will be to the viewing behavior of the users, but it could finally be the way to expose new content - and may eventually become the means for placing ads, as it has with Instagram Explore.

It said the testing of the new Explore Feed experience is in early stages around a few regions worldwide with select users, but it is not ready yet to roll out widely. The TikTok Now/Friends tab is still the default experience for all users.

In its current form, TikTok Explore isn't nearly as visually appealing as Instagram Explore.  The latter is a colorful, full-bleed grid of images and videos the app believes the user will like based on prior behavior. It contains no white space and text, unlike the test of TikTok Explore. It also restricts what can appear on the screen in terms of content, compared to how design has played out for TikTok. Whereas the Instagram could show several dozens of photos and videos on the page of Explore, the TikTok Explore could only do four.

Of course, this is pretty much an early-stage test, so this may not be the final experience - and the feature itself may never ever reach the point of rolling out to the public at all. That will depend on how users choose to engage with Explore and if it generates the metrics TikTok wants to see.

It does, however, say that TikTok is at least considering backing away from trying to be a more traditional social network that focuses on connecting people with others they know.

It may also mark a slow retreating for TikTok Now, since it would no longer have prime home screen real estate in the dedicated Friends tab. Launched last fall amidst many other BeReal clones, TikTok Now was a shameless attempt to turn BeReal's once-a-day photos into just another feature for a larger social app. But demand for BeReal has been trending down, with a decline in downloads from 15.2 million in October 2022 to 4.2 million this February, according to data from Apptopia recently cited by Digiday. That could mean TikTok finds a better use for this prominent tab within its app and one that will give it a new surface to discover — and perhaps advertise on.