TikTok is turning what used to be a mostly solo scrolling experience into something much more collaborative, introducing new tools that let people build shared spaces around the videos they care about. With a shared feed and Shared Collections, the app is trying to formalize the way friends and families already swap links in group chats and DMs, and pull that behavior into the core product. The result is a more social, more organized TikTok that treats curation itself as something users can do together, not just alone.
Shared Feed and Shared Collections, explained
TikTok’s new shared feed and Shared Collections features are designed to sit on top of the familiar For You and Following streams rather than replace them, giving users a dedicated place to watch and save clips with specific people. Instead of endlessly forwarding links, a small group can now gather around a single feed that is tuned to their combined tastes, while Shared Collections act as a kind of collaborative bookmark folder. The company is pitching these tools as a way for friends and families to discover, share, and connect in a more intentional way, building on its existing recommendation engine rather than starting from scratch.
In its own description of the rollout, TikTok frames this shift as part of “new ways for friends and families to discover, share, and connect,” and explicitly highlights the feature it calls Introducing Shared Collection as a core piece of that strategy. Alongside Shared Collections, the shared feed is presented as a separate, invite-based stream that participants can join or leave at any time, giving them more control over how collaborative their TikTok experience becomes. Together, the two features signal that the app is no longer content to be just a personalized video slot machine, and is instead leaning into shared discovery as a product pillar.
How the shared feed actually works
The shared feed is TikTok’s attempt to turn its recommendation engine into something that can serve a small group instead of a single account. Rather than simply mirroring one person’s For You page, the shared feed pulls in signals from everyone who has been invited, combining their viewing history, likes, and interests into a single stream. In practice, that means a couple, a group of roommates, or a circle of friends can open the same feed and see a curated mix that reflects all of them, not just whoever happens to be holding the phone.
Reporting on the rollout notes that TikTok has “unveiled a new” shared feed that is still powered by TikTok videos but tuned to multiple participants at once, with the selections generated from both participants’ previous activity, likes, and interests across topics like entertainment, lifestyle, and dating. That shared stream is not a public broadcast, it is a private space that exists only for the people who have been invited into it, which is why the shared feed is described as a feature that TikTok has unveiled as a new way to watch together. By grounding the feed in the same recommendation logic that powers the rest of the app, TikTok is betting that a group’s combined signals will be strong enough to keep the content relevant without requiring anyone to manually program the stream.
Shared Collections as collaborative organization
If the shared feed is about watching together in real time, Shared Collections are about organizing content together over time. TikTok is positioning Shared Collections as a space where people can save and sort videos around a specific theme, from recipes to travel plans, and then invite others to contribute. Instead of each person maintaining their own private list of saved clips, a Shared Collection becomes a living folder that everyone in the group can add to, edit, and revisit whenever they need inspiration.
One report describes how, with Shared Collections, users can now do things like create a space to share cookie-swap plans and holiday-dinner ideas, then come back to that same hub to watch, react, and comment on the videos that have been gathered there. TikTok says these Shared Collections are available globally and are designed to be a persistent place to save, watch, and comment on content as a group, which turns what used to be a fleeting DM into an ongoing project. The company’s own announcement of With Shared Collections emphasizes that this is not just a new button in the interface, it is a new way to organize TikTok around shared goals and events.
Who can create and join these shared spaces
Access rules are a crucial part of how these features work, because TikTok is trying to balance collaboration with privacy and safety. For Shared Collections in particular, the app does not let just anyone invite anyone else, it requires a mutual connection before a collaborative folder can be created. That means users have to be following each other before they can start pooling their saved videos into a single, shared list, which is a deliberate guardrail against spam and unwanted invitations.
According to detailed product descriptions, you can only create a Shared Collection with someone if you are both following each other, and those Collections can stay just between close friends and family or they can be made public if the group wants to share more widely. That same reporting notes that You can only create a Shared Collection under those mutual-follow conditions, which gives users a clear signal that these spaces are meant for people who already have some relationship on the platform. The shared feed follows a similar invite-based model, where participants receive an invitation to join and can leave the chat at any time, reinforcing the idea that these are opt-in, controllable experiences rather than default public feeds.
Inside the shared feed experience
From a user’s perspective, the shared feed behaves like a hybrid of a group chat and a For You page. Once someone has created a shared feed and invited others, everyone in that group sees the same stream of videos, can react to them, and can discuss them in an attached chat. The feed itself is algorithmic, but the social layer around it is very human, with participants able to respond in real time, send messages, and decide together what they want to watch next.
Coverage of the feature notes that these feeds are shared via invitation and that the participants can leave the chat at any time, which gives them a level of autonomy that is not always present in group-based products. There is also a new dashboard that helps people manage which shared feeds they are part of and what is happening inside them, so the experience does not get lost among regular DMs and notifications. One report describes how There is also a new dashboard for these collaborative spaces, which suggests TikTok expects users to join more than one shared feed and wants to make it easier to keep track of them. By giving the shared feed its own management tools, TikTok is signaling that this is not a side experiment, it is a core part of how it expects people to use the app.
Why TikTok is betting on Shared Collections
Shared Collections are not just a convenience feature, they are a strategic move to keep planning and inspiration inside TikTok instead of letting it spill over into other apps. When a group of friends is planning a trip, a wedding, or even a weekend dinner, they often bounce between TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and messaging apps to collect ideas and coordinate. By offering a built-in space where those same people can save and sort TikTok videos together, the company is trying to reduce that friction and make its platform the default home for that kind of collaboration.
Analysts who track social product design have pointed out that, along the same line as the shared feed, TikTok is also rolling out “Shared Collections,” which will enable friends and family to save posts into a shared folder that lives inside the app. That description of Along the same line, TikTok’s also rolling out Shared Collections underscores how tightly linked these features are in the company’s thinking, both aimed at enhancing connection rather than just passive consumption. By making Shared Collections flexible enough to stay private among a small circle or be made public for a wider audience, TikTok is also giving creators a new way to package their recommendations, whether that is a list of must-try restaurants in Tokyo or a set of tutorials for building a gaming PC.
Real-world use cases: from cookie swaps to trip planning
The most compelling part of these features is how they map onto specific, everyday scenarios. For families, a Shared Collection could become the central place to gather holiday recipes, with one person saving a stuffing tutorial, another adding a pie recipe, and a third dropping in a video about table decor. The same family might use a shared feed to unwind together in the evening, scrolling through a stream that blends the kids’ favorite comedy clips with the parents’ interest in home renovation or gardening, all without having to fight over whose For You page to use.
Reports already highlight examples like creating a space to share cookie-swap plans and holiday-dinner ideas, which show how these tools can turn seasonal rituals into collaborative projects. For friend groups, the possibilities are just as concrete: a Shared Collection could hold every video about a planned road trip in a 2024 Subaru Outback, from campsite reviews to packing hacks, while a shared feed keeps everyone entertained with travel vlogs and local food recommendations tuned to the group’s tastes. Because Shared Collections can stay just between close friends and family or be made public, a group could even decide to publish its curated list of the best ramen spots in Los Angeles once the trip is over, turning private planning into a resource for others.
How this fits into TikTok’s broader product strategy
These collaborative tools do not exist in isolation, they sit alongside other experiments that show TikTok trying to deepen engagement beyond the basic For You page. Earlier this year, the company began testing a Nearby Feed in select countries, a separate tab that surfaces local content based on a user’s location. That move signaled an interest in more contextual, place-based discovery, and the shared feed and Shared Collections now add a social layer on top of that, focusing on who you are watching with as much as what you are watching.
In the same product family, TikTok has described “new ways for friends and families to discover, share, and connect,” tying the shared feed, Shared Collections, and other features like the Nearby Feed into a single narrative about connection. The official language around New ways for friends and families to discover, share, and connect makes it clear that TikTok sees itself not just as an entertainment app but as a place where relationships are maintained and organized. By layering shared feeds and Shared Collections on top of features like the Nearby Feed, TikTok is building a more complex ecosystem where recommendations are shaped by both geography and social graphs, which could make the app feel more relevant in daily life but also raises new questions about how those signals are weighted.
What this means for creators and brands
For creators, the arrival of shared feeds and Shared Collections changes the dynamics of how their content is discovered and saved. Instead of relying solely on individual users to like or favorite a video, creators now have to think about how their clips might fit into group contexts, whether that is a Shared Collection about home workouts or a shared feed tuned to dating advice. Content that sparks conversation or lends itself to planning is likely to benefit, because it is more likely to be dropped into a collaborative folder or watched together in a group stream.
Brands face a similar shift, especially those in categories like travel, food, fashion, and home improvement that naturally lend themselves to group decision-making. A hotel chain might aim to have its property tours saved into Shared Collections for bachelor party planning, while a grocery brand could create recipe series that families add to their holiday folders. Because the shared feed is generated from participants’ previous activity, likes, and interests, brands that already have strong engagement with a particular demographic may find their videos surfacing more often in group streams where that demographic is overrepresented. The key for both creators and brands will be to design content that feels useful in a collaborative setting, not just catchy in a single scroll.
Risks, limits, and what comes next
As with any new social feature, there are trade-offs and open questions. The requirement that users follow each other before creating a Shared Collection is a clear attempt to limit abuse, but it also means that some potentially useful collaborations, such as between a small business and its customers, will need extra steps to get started. The invite-based nature of shared feeds gives participants control, yet it also introduces another layer of complexity in an app that already has multiple tabs, inboxes, and notification types competing for attention.
There are also broader cultural implications to consider. By formalizing group viewing and collaborative saving, TikTok is nudging people toward more structured ways of using the app, which could be a relief for those who feel overwhelmed by the endless scroll but might feel constraining to others. The presence of a new dashboard for managing shared feeds and the emphasis on features like TikTok announces shared feed and collections features suggest that the company is committed to iterating on this model rather than treating it as a one-off experiment. As users begin to adopt these tools for everything from cookie swaps to cross-country moves, the real test will be whether shared feeds and Shared Collections feel like natural extensions of how people already use TikTok, or whether they require new habits that only the most engaged users will embrace.
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