TikTok is launching a new “Campus Hub,” the company told TechCrunch in an email on Thursday. The new hub features dedicated college group chats and personalized feeds designed to help students stay connected with their campus communities, even while they’re away for the summer.
The new hub builds on the app’s campus verification feature, which launched last August and lets users add their college campus to their TikTok profile and browse a list of students at their school in order to find and connect with others on their campus. The feature is available across more than 6,000 universities through TikTok’s partnership with UNiDAYS, a student verification platform that confirms student status.
Once users confirm their student status, they will get access to their new dedicated campus hub.
Students can create and join group chats with up to 300 classmates. These group chats are exclusive to verified students at the same school. TikTok says these chats can be used to stay in touch, plan reunions, or keep conversations going over the summer.
While these chats could be useful for the summer, TikTok may also be aiming to get students to use its app for everyday school communication, like class or club discussions that typically take place on other platforms such as Discord, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram.
As for the new college feeds, users will see a personalized feed that surfaces a mix of content posted by verified students and content related to their university. TikTok says these feeds will allow students to stay plugged into campus life, trends, and updates from wherever they may be.
The new features are reminiscent of Facebook’s early days, when the platform was built entirely around college campuses and required people to sign up with a valid “.edu” email address in order to connect with classmates and meet people at their university.
It’s worth noting that TikTok isn’t the only social media giant looking to make it easier for college students to connect with each other, as Meta-owned Instagram rolled out a feature last year that’s nearly identical to TikTok’s campus verification feature, as it also allows students in the U.S. to add their college or university to their profile banner and browse a list of students at their school.
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