Tiktok looks like its doubling down on the “pine” in its mini dramas with the new PineDrama app, now available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. It’s free, likely until the company has amassed a large enough content library worth paying for.
At the moment, everything looks like romantic potboilers, but since microdramas are popular and getting more so even as I type, that’s bound to change. You’ve probably seen microdramas and the various apps with which you watch them in your social media ads — they’re short movies or TV shows that last one or two minutes per episode.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add as a preferred Google source.
The PineDrama app is fairly basic. There’s a central Home screen with your feed and trending videos, as well as access to your history and all videos. Discover offers just slightly larger thumbnails for browsing all or trending videos. Inbox is for system and new follower notifications, and a Profile view shows you your favorites as well as how many people you’re following, followers and likes.
Though a standalone app, PineDrama uses the main TikTok sign-in system, so you still need a TikTok account to access it. Given that the content looks a little like what’s available in the TikTok app, anyone who wants to use PineDrama probably has an account, anyway.
The play views have brief descriptions, such as “Lorenzo protects Jane, mistaking her for a widow…” (left) and “Firefighter Raymond defies his grandfather to marry his rescuer…” (right).
Personally, I’m not a fan of miniseries. I’ve never been able to read comics until they’ve been collected into volumes, and can’t stream shows until an entire season — sometimes every season — is out. (None of which makes sense, given I’ve got the attention span of a cat in a room full of laser pointers.)
But sometimes you need a dopamine hit, and PineDrama lets you watch every single episode sequentially. And viewing just the first frame of each is kind of mesmerizing: From kiss to post-coital to packing a suitcase in just three swipes.
We reached out to TikTok for comment, but didn’t immediately hear back.
