The Facebook-owned social platform is introducing a new feature to try and stem the growth of TikTok. For now available only in Brazil
Instagram has introduced a new video editing tool that takes some of the most popular features in TikTok, the now famous Chinese app loved by teenagers but that is quickly making a breakthrough even in the “heart” of influencers of any age, even in Italy.
TikTok allows you to share video clips of 15 or 60 seconds combined with music, special sound effects and new filters. Clips include ballets, comic mini-sketches, musical parodies or lip-sync, and boast fast and very intuitive editing. And, as Mark Zuckerberg also said, Facebook can’t afford to lose any more ground to TikTok in a particularly valuable user base. For this reason, Instagram is destined to look more and more like TikTok, with new features and new filters created “ad hoc” to counter the advance of the Chinese app.
Reels: the new video editing tool
Reels, this is the name of the new video editing tool, runs on both iOS and Android, but only in Brazil and it is not known when and if it will be launched in other countries. Reels allows Instagram users to record a video lasting up to 15 seconds, adjust its speed, synchronize it with music or replace the audio of the video shot with another borrowed from another clip thus tracing the “Duet” function present in the popular Chinese social.
Videos can then be shared directly in Stories or sent via Direct. And that’s not all: the clips “worked” with Reels can also be published in a new and special section within the “Explore” tabs of Instagram and called “Top Reels”. A kind of archive always updated wanted by the developers of Instagram to ensure that the videos go viral faster.
It’s war on TikTok
So, from the parts of Menlo Park, they decided to give the lunge at TikTok trying to “copy” and improve the functions that have contributed most to the success of the Chinese social platform have decreed the enormous success. TikTok, moreover, is facing some problems related to security and privacy management, so much so that the U.S. authorities would be ready to launch an investigation to verify how user data are treated and, above all, what happens to them.