Today, Facebook has announced Instagram Reels which is their new Tiktok competitor developed inhouse.
“Instagram Reels is a new way to create and discover short, entertaining videos on Instagram,” they explained in the blogpost.
Reells will allow you to edit 15 second long multi-clip videos with audio effects and creative tools. You can share these reels in your feed or through a new space in Instagram Explore. Instagram claims that Reels in Explore offers anyone the chance to become a creator on Instagram and reach a global audience.
Creating Reels is done on the Instagram camera. Select the Reels option on the Instagram camera and you get a swath of creative tools to help you create content. You can add audio (either by searching or using original audio), AR effects, timer and countdowns, choose to speed up or slow down the video and align objects on the video. These Reels are shared on a dedicated space on Explore as previously said but they still follow your privacy settings on Instagram.
From the reels tab on your profile, when you tap your reel, you can see who liked and commented on your Reel, video plays (still in development) and whether it was chosen to be featured.
If you need to watch these Reels, you will need to visit the Explore tab. They are displayed in a vertical format (mobile content is best viewed this way). You will also see some reels with a “featured” label which are chosen by Instagram to discover original content.
Instagram says that Reels is not currently available to everyone so you may miss it from your Instagram app.
This is Facebook’s biggest onslaught against TikTok and they have chosen Instagram as the perfect medium to take on it. Instagram already has a billion users which makes it the perfect place to match up with TikTok’s runaway success. This also comes at a time when TikTok is facing problems in the US where it could be banned pretty soon and Microsoft confirming they are in talks to buy TikTok.
