Matt Navarra, the famous social media app researcher, recently tweeted about a new feature that Facebook is working on. Apparently, Facebook is testing a feature that allows the users to create ‘Short Videos’ with almost identical functionality and user interface to the famous app, TikTok.
This news does not come as a surprise. Facebook has often been accused of blatantly copying the format of other famous platforms. Many of their recent ‘copycat’ ventures have failed miserably. Facebook never gives up though. A while ago, Facebook introduced ‘Reels’ for Instagram which is based on the same TikTok-like short-form videos. Now, Facebook is looking to expand the feature to its main app also.
Despite all the massive popularity, TikTok is seeing some bad days for a while now. It is owned by a Chinese conglomerate, ByteDance, and due to the tense political situation, TikTok has been banned in India. On the other hand, US President Donald Trump is also all set to impose a ban on the app in the US. Trump has given an ultimatum to ByteDance to sell off TikTok to Microsoft or any other investor within few weeks, otherwise, the US operations and business with ByteDance will immediately be stopped.
Amidst so much chaos, Facebook decided to jump in and take advantage of the bans on TikTok. To ‘feast’ on its popularity, Facebook is now testing this Short Videos feature which appears in the middle of the News Feed. It has the same ‘swipe-up’ functionality as that of TikTok which allows the user to scroll up for the next video. The interface is also quite identical to TikTok. There are options of ‘like’ and ‘comment’ in the bottom right corner of a video. The users can start creating videos by clicking on the ‘Create and share short videos’ option when a new Facebook Camera appears on clicking the ‘Create’ option. Music clips can be added to these videos just like TikTok, and then these creations can be shared in-app as well as in the new ‘Short Videos’ section on Facebook.
This feature is currently being tested for Android devices, and it is not known if it will be available for other operating systems as well. Currently, it is available for a limited number of people in India and other countries who are probably taking part in testing the feature.
About the feature, Facebook says that it always tests new and creative tools so that it gets to know about the likes and dislikes of the public. When it saw how popular this short-form video concept is amongst the masses, it decided to bring it to its main app and on Instagram, in the form of Instagram Reels.
Read next: Instagram Tests an Automatic Caption-Generating Option
This news does not come as a surprise. Facebook has often been accused of blatantly copying the format of other famous platforms. Many of their recent ‘copycat’ ventures have failed miserably. Facebook never gives up though. A while ago, Facebook introduced ‘Reels’ for Instagram which is based on the same TikTok-like short-form videos. Now, Facebook is looking to expand the feature to its main app also.
Despite all the massive popularity, TikTok is seeing some bad days for a while now. It is owned by a Chinese conglomerate, ByteDance, and due to the tense political situation, TikTok has been banned in India. On the other hand, US President Donald Trump is also all set to impose a ban on the app in the US. Trump has given an ultimatum to ByteDance to sell off TikTok to Microsoft or any other investor within few weeks, otherwise, the US operations and business with ByteDance will immediately be stopped.
Amidst so much chaos, Facebook decided to jump in and take advantage of the bans on TikTok. To ‘feast’ on its popularity, Facebook is now testing this Short Videos feature which appears in the middle of the News Feed. It has the same ‘swipe-up’ functionality as that of TikTok which allows the user to scroll up for the next video. The interface is also quite identical to TikTok. There are options of ‘like’ and ‘comment’ in the bottom right corner of a video. The users can start creating videos by clicking on the ‘Create and share short videos’ option when a new Facebook Camera appears on clicking the ‘Create’ option. Music clips can be added to these videos just like TikTok, and then these creations can be shared in-app as well as in the new ‘Short Videos’ section on Facebook.
This feature is currently being tested for Android devices, and it is not known if it will be available for other operating systems as well. Currently, it is available for a limited number of people in India and other countries who are probably taking part in testing the feature.
About the feature, Facebook says that it always tests new and creative tools so that it gets to know about the likes and dislikes of the public. When it saw how popular this short-form video concept is amongst the masses, it decided to bring it to its main app and on Instagram, in the form of Instagram Reels.
Read next: Instagram Tests an Automatic Caption-Generating Option
