Instagram really wants its TikTok clone, Reels to gain more users as it recently officially launched globally.
TikTok is in quite a pickle as it has been banned in India and a looming ban in the U.S.
Donald Trump officially issued an executive order forcing ByteDance to sell or spinoff TikTok’s US operations within 90 days.
US companies like Microsoft and Twitter have shown interest in buying TikTok.
There’s now a lawsuit that TikTok‘s US-based employees have planned to file challenging Trump’s executive order claiming the order would make it illegal for TikTok to pay them.
I'm proud to be one of the lawyers now working on this case to defend TikTok employees' rights. I believe that the U.S. government with its overbroad executive order has put employees' Constitutional rights, including the right to be paid, in jeopardy. https://t.co/rQG2hZeX02
— Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) August 13, 2020
Amid all the TikTok drama, Facebook took this opportunity to launch Reels worldwide.
Reels 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(private).
They can also be found through a new space in Instagram Explore(public).
Did you know that Instagram Stories was internally called Reels before it launched in August 2016?
According to some users, Instagram is now switching the Explore tab that has the search icon with the Reels tab.
Most of them already not only hate Reels but also the Reels tab that replaces the Explore tab.
New videos tab appeared on Instagram just now, replacing search, which is now at the top. Anyone else have this?@MattNavarra pic.twitter.com/Twj5JiSVSu
— AJ (@aj_malakai) August 12, 2020
I personally dont like Reels (because of the content) and today @instagram just removed the search button from bottom and added the reels button over there🤦♂️🤦♂️
It's annoying😓 pic.twitter.com/KHyrELoqHn
— Saurabh Nahar (@aatechnology_in) August 13, 2020
https://twitter.com/AryanSuryA_/status/1294215884441968641
Put the reels tab where the search tab was pic.twitter.com/L5ao6vb60O
— COWBOY PHIL 𐚁 (@GrandpaHive) August 12, 2020
The search icon can now be found on top of the homepage.
This new feature will choke Instagram by its own doing as people get annoyed by this experience and stop using the app as often as they do or entirely switch to other rival apps.
