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| Facebook launches promising service Reels to rival TikTok |
Facebook today (Wednesday) announced the launch of Reels' short video sharing service as an Instagram feature, with the aim of competing with the popular TikTok service in the U.S. and 50 other countries.
The product was released days after Microsoft announced that it was negotiating with the Chinese company, ByteDance, to acquire Tik Tok. Byte Dance has reportedly agreed to sell some Tik Tok products under pressure from the White House. For data security reasons, the White House and other Chinese-owned apps have threatened to block it.
I think the release of Rails will increase the intense competition between Facebook and Tik Tok because every one of them is a threat, especially in the United States. All of them seek to attract teens who performed before Tik Tok in the past two years.
Facebook started in Brazil in 2018 and then tested Rails in France, Germany and India. It is the largest marketplace for the Tik Tok app, which the Indian government banned last month after a border dispute with China. . Facebook also tried a standalone app called Lasso that didn't get much attention.
As with Tik Tok, Rails users can record short vertical videos suitable for mobile devices and then add special effects and audio tracks to rip from the music library. These similarities prompted CEO Tik Tok to name the Rails service as a "fake product" to take advantage of the huge Instagram user base after "the rapid failure of other fake products (Lasso)".
Last week, during a hearing in the U.S. Congress, Facebook made similar allegations about abuse of market power by American technology companies. Lawmakers said the company downgraded Snapchat's reporting feature for non-competition reasons.
Instagram has not yet planned to use Rails to serve ads or any other medium to users.