It’s well known that Microsoft is currently trying to buy the US subsidiary of TikTok, the hugely popular Chinese streaming platform, and rumors have it that Bill Gates’ company is going to pay anywhere between 10 and 30 billion dollars for the privilege. Today’s breaking news is that Facebook decided to take the tech-war with China one step further and launched its own version of TikTok , Instagram Reels respectively.
Instagram Reels was launched globally today and it’s now available in over fifty countries, including the United States, in an effort to challenge TikTok’s expansion. If you’re not from this planet, you must learn that TikTok is a hugely popular short-form creative content platform, and Instagram Reels is trying to challenge that.
Facebook’s take on what can be described as the Twitter version of YouTube, i.e. short-form videos, is currently available in Germany, France, Brazil, India, Japan, the UK, Spain, Australia, Argentina, to name just a few, and the timing is excellent.
TikTok is having an uncertain future in the United States, due to President Trump weighing on forcing the Chinese company to sell off its US subsidiary to an American owned corporation, or even to ban the app completely from Google Store and Apple store, which would render TikTok useless for most people.
Facebook launched its first TikTok clone back in 2018, a standalone app called Lasso. However, the app failed miserably and Facebook put the kibosh on it in 2020. Instagram Reels is its successor and it allows users to publish a fifteen second video, enhanced by various editing tools such as AR effects, music, a countdown timer and an align-tool to line-up various takes.
Here’s Instagram head of Product, Vishal Shah:
“We think it’s really important to honor the rights of the music labels — and that’s one we’ve been working on for years now. We’re launching Reels now in countries where we have rights. We think that the catalog is quite deep and it has some unique content that you can’t really find, at that depth, in other platforms. At the same time, we wanted to make sure that all the restrictions that we needed to put in place — whether that was on the country basis or what could people download and use and remix etc. — were all built into the product from from day one. That’s something we’ve been working with the labels on and was an important consideration in the launch”
One of the main advantages of Reels is that it’s practically built into Instagram’s Camera app, which is already familiar with the Instagram crowd, and that means it’s going to be a breeze to use for most people.
Image Credits: Instagram