In an effort to remain relevant, Instagram is at it again.
Remember the days before Instagram had Insta stories? Yeah, neither do we. That’s how much of an impact Instagram’s blatant rip off of Snapchat’s popular video format was. In fact, Instagram’s knack for maintaining its relevance in this era of low attention spans and an ever changing landscape has been built on adapting and evolving (oftentimes with tried and tested formats first introduced in other apps).
That being said, with the rise of Chinese owned rival TikTok, Instagram’s plan to maintain it’s relevance once again revolves around the company knocking off formats that were first made popular by its rivals. The Facebook owned app has introduced its own version of TikTok’s insanely successful video clips with music format and it’s called “Reels”.
Reels basically allows you to make short 15-second videos set to music and share them as Stories, reeling you in with the potential to go viral on a brand new ‘Top Reels’ section on the Explore page. Just as you can on TikTok, users can soundtrack their Reels with a huge catalog of music, or borrow the audio from anyone else’s video to create a remix of their meme or joke.
What gives Instagram Reels the edge over TikTok however, is that with Reels, users can post their masterpieces to their close friends list or to just one person via direct message. The feature is only being launched in Brazil for now, and there’s no plans as of yet for a release anywhere else.
It’s worth noting that Instagram does admit that TikTok paved the way for this to happen.
“I think Musically before TikTok, and TikTok deserve a ton of credit for popularizing this format,”
-Instagram director of product management Robby Stein
It’s also worth noting however, that according to TechCrunch, that is pretty much the same thing Instagram founder Kevin Systrom said to them about Snapchat when the app took what made Snapchat unique and repackaged it so successfully that Snapchat lost its relevance.
Instagram’s rip off of TikTok is interesting though, because you often hear about Chinese brands ripping off it’s Western counterparts but this time, the tables have turned. This actually marks the second time that Facebook is trying it’s hand at the format. The social network originally gave it a go with an app called Lasso but trying to convince people to download a whole separate app proved to be a wall they just couldn’t climb.
Could this ‘brand new’ feature spell the end of TikTok as we know it? Let us know what you think.
