As TikTok faces a potential ban in the US, rival Facebook is swooping with its own competing product. On Wednesday, the company launched Reels, a new feature on Instagram that’ll let you record, share and watch 15-second short videos.
Like TikTok, the new Reels feature can pair your short videos with hit songs from Instagram’s music library. Users can also add augmented reality effects, speed up or slow down the footage, and record the video hands-free with the help of a countdown timer.
“You can share reels with your followers on Feed, and, if you have a public account, make them available to the wider Instagram community through a new space in Explore,” Instagram says.
To watch the short videos, users can go to the Explore tab (the magnifying glass icon), where there will be a new page devoted to Reels. “Discover an entertaining selection of reels made by anyone on Instagram, in a vertical feed customized for you,” Instagram says.
(Credit: Instagram)
It isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to outcompete TikTok. In 2018, the company created a copycat product called Lasso, which functioned as a standalone app. However, last month Facebook retired the app. TikTok, on the other hand, has been seeing surging growth. Third-party research firm Sensor Tower estimates the video-sharing app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times.
However, the fate of TikTok remains unclear. The app’s parent, Chinese company ByteDance, is negotiating a potential sale to Microsoft as President Trump plans to ban the video-sharing app unless it changes ownership to a US company.
In the meantime, Facebook is trying to pull users away from TikTok, this time by leveraging Instagram, which already has a massive user base. The company first began testing Reels in November for users in Brazil. Facebook then rolled out the feature to users in France, Germany, and India before taking it worldwide.
“Reels is a major part of the next chapter of Instagram,” the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tweeted on Wednesday. “We can’t wait to see what you create.”
