Signals

Global – TikTok has officially launched a specially designed app for Apple's Vision Pro headset, providing users with an immersive short-form video experience. The app has been meticulously redesigned 'from the ground up', according to Ahmad Zahran, TikTok's product lead. While major streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube have been hesitant to fully embrace Apple's new hardware, TikTok seized the opportunity to bring a completely new user experience to its platform.

The interface maintains a familiar TikTok look, featuring a vertically oriented video player with interactive buttons for liking, commenting, favouriting and sharing. To optimise the increased screen size of the Vision Pro, additional interface elements such as comments and creator profiles are intelligently positioned on a side panel, ensuring an unobstructed viewing experience.

TikTok users can enjoy videos while still being aware of their real-world surroundings or choose a fully virtual location like the Moon. The app is designed to seamlessly integrate with other applications on the headset, expanding the possibilities for content consumption.

For more insights on AR/VR headsets, visit our Technology sector.

Every Friday, we offer an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, foresight analyst Alice Crossley discusses how brands are putting their own spin on Hailey Bieber's Rhode Lip Case phone case, why spas are being 'rebranded' for men and the death of subcultures.

: Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode broke the internet last week with the reveal of a £27.60 ($35, €32.24) phone case with a custom in-built lip gloss holder for the famed Rhode Peptide Lip Treatment. A clever marketing ploy, the case was created by Sam Sontagg, Shopify’s design director and the brains behind some of Glossiers’ best brand designs. Low-alcohol vodka brand Body was the first to cash in on the viral idea, launching a phone case with an in-built flask filled with Body vodka on Instagram this week. Spirits Innovations are getting increasingly creative to appeal to sober-curious Gen Z…

: We’ve been tracking a rise in demand for Urban Bathing for a while now on LS:N Global, but according to Business of Fashion spas are now being rebranded as ‘recovery-focused establishments’ to appeal to male customers. New York’s Remedy Place, for instance, counts 50% of its customers as Millennial men (including rapper Drake and pop star Shawn Mendes) and avoids the label of spa instead calling itself ‘the world’s first social wellness club’, pushing treatments such as ice baths and cryotherapy over facials or massages.

: Ahead of our upcoming Generations Now and Next: 2024-2025 report I’ve been thinking a lot about how the internet and social media have irrevocably changed adolescence for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. This New York Times article perfectly encapsulates everything Gen Z is missing out on in the shift from community-forming subcultures to superficial aesthetics.