MUMBAI: Popular social networking app Tik-Tok has begun limited test of a feature that will allow users to add links to products and e-commerce sites on their bio and posts. The Chinese short-video making platform, with a billion plus users, has been exploring ways to monetise its ever-increasing user-base and the new feature will put it in direct competition with established players like Facebook and Instagram, both of which let its users monetise their content.

The new feature allows content creators on Tik-Tok to insert product links, offering users the ability to send their viewers to shopping websites effortlessly to monetise its platform. The ‘link in bio’ feature was first rolled out by Instagram and was subsequently adopted by Facebook as well.

The new feature was first noticed by marketer Fabian Bern, a marketer and according to the video shared by him on Twitter, the users can now swipe on a post to directly visit an e-commerce platform to buy a product.

BREAKING: TikTok launches 'link in bio' & 'social commerce URLS' in videos @MattNavarra @TaylorLorenz @sarahintampa @TechCrunch @thenextweb @techinasia #tiktok pic.twitter.com/HczzHOHCNf

— Fabian Bern 法比安 (@iamfabianbern) November 14, 2019

Launched in 2017, the app developed by ByteDance, currently has over 1.5 billion users worldwide.  The app is immensely popular in India. According to app research firm Sensor Tower:  “India has been the biggest driver of TikTok's popularity, giving it 466.8 million downloads. China generated the second-most downloads, with 173.2 million or 11.5 percent. The US came in third, with 123.8 million downloads, or 8.2 percent. And that's not even including third party Android installs. Specifically, India drove up 277.6 million downloads so far this year, roughly 45 percent of all global installs for the app this year.”