Summary
- Whee is a new app by ByteDance, resembling Instagram but with a more personal touch for sharing photos with friends and family only.
- The app has a simple UI with tabs for camera, feed, and messages, emphasizing privacy with “Made for friends” captions.
- It is currently available in select countries on Android, with a potential worldwide release in the future.
Taking features from rival social media platforms is nothing new. Instagram borrowed stories and reels from Snapchat and TikTok, respectively, while TikTok recently introduced its Notes app, which is quite similar to Instagram’s Threads for photos and text sharing. Now, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, appears to have silently launched a new app called Whee, which looks very much like an Instagram clone.
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First spotted by Artem Russakovskii, the app is available for download on Android in more than a dozen countries but not in the US yet. While we were able to download the app via the Google Play Store, it showed an error message when we tried to log in. Using a VPN doesn’t work either, so we recommend waiting until the app officially arrives in your region if you want to give it a go.
Whee looks like an Instagram clone but offers a more personal feel
Based on the Play Store’s description and screenshots, Whee looks like Instagram but with a more personal touch. According to the developer, Whee is designed for sharing photos that “only your friends can see,” unlike Instagram, where public accounts allow anyone to see your posts. The friends-only approach is even emphasized in the screenshots, saying, “Share with friends only,” “Made for friends,” and “Like and comment only with friends.”
According to the screenshots, the app has a fairly simple UI with three tabs for the camera, feed, and messages. There’s also an Instagram-like notification button at the top. However, the decision to introduce Whee seems puzzling, given that ByteDance only recently launched TikTok Notes, which is another Instagram-like app for sharing photos and texts. While Whee focuses on a friends-only approach, it’s still unclear why this functionality couldn’t be integrated into the Notes app, similar to how Instagram handles private and public accounts.
There’s no information from TikTok about when or if Whee will be available worldwide. This, in fact, seems to be some sort of a soft launch, and it could also be the case wherein ByteDance might even pull the app before it reaches more users. If you want to give Whee a try, you can download it from the Play Store below.
