By Jeff Horwitz
Facebook Inc.'s Instagram has launched a short-video feature in
the U.S., challenging the empire that Chinese social-media upstart
TikTok has built on user-generated dance videos, comedy skits and
viral challenges.
The home-market debut Wednesday of Reels continues a practice
within Facebook--and elsewhere in Silicon Valley--in which it takes
inspiration from competitors and then launches similar features in
its own products. Reels is a major investment for Instagram,
showcased prominently within the app and buttressed by video
creators being paid to participate in its launch.
Four years ago Instagram rolled out Instagram Stories, in which
photos disappear after 24 hours--similar to the signature
disappearing-messages feature within Snap Inc.'s Snapchat.
Instagram Stories has become one of the most popular of the app's
services.
In a blog post last month, TikTok Chief Executive Kevin Mayer
called Reels a "copycat product" and added, "To those who wish to
launch competitive products, we say bring it on."
Robby Stein, product director for Reels, credited TikTok with
popularizing a new video format but said Instagram would
distinguish its version by adapting it to the desires of users.
"At the end of the day, these products are just a piece of
video, a creative tool, and a way to look at it," he said in an
interview. "We've really focused on how this type of format could
work within the Instagram community."
The U.S. launch of Reels comes at a difficult time for TikTok,
owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. TikTok has been banned
in India amid geopolitical tensions with China, and faces a similar
threat from President Trump. The White House is pushing for a sale
of TikTok, and Microsoft Corp. has emerged as a suitor for its U.S.
operations.
The competitive landscape in short video is also becoming more
crowded, with users downloading apps including Zynn, byte, Triller
and Clash on their mobile devices.
Instagram says it has been pleased with the response to Reels,
already launched in countries including Brazil, India and France,
but has provided no usage metrics. But if Reels is a U.S. hit, it
could make Instagram one of the world's most popular short-video
apps. Instagram has more than one billion users world-wide, while
TikTok has 100 million users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions
more globally.
How Reels shows videos marks a significant change from
Instagram's current approach. Instead of primarily highlighting
content from a user's friends and specific accounts they follow,
Reels will promote the most-engaging videos from across the
platform--another feature shared with TikTok.
"We're taking a very creator-centric approach to ranking that
will hopefully result in people getting discovered and gaining a
following," said Vishal Shah, Instagram's product chief, in an
interview before the launch. One measure of success, he said, would
be if users become global superstars based on their Reels
videos.
While there are differences between Reels and TikTok--Instagram
limits videos to 15 seconds, rather than a minute, and offers
proprietary special effects--users in countries where Reels is
available have pronounced it a doppleganger.
"It's not unique at all--it's a complete copy of TikTok," said
Alec Wilcock, a social-media commentator based in France, in a June
video review of Reels.
Krishna Subramanian, founder of influencer marketing platform
Captiv8 Inc., said the prospect of an obscure teenager becoming
famous was key to TikTok's success--and could be deployed by
Instagram as well.
"One of the things that keeps people producing content is the
chance that you might win the lottery and go viral," he said. "If
you haven't gotten it yet, someone in your circle has."
Reels isn't Facebook's first TikTok challenger. In 2018, the
company released Lasso, a stand-alone app from its New Product
Experimentation group that duplicated many of TikTok's features.
But it failed to catch on and was shut down in June, as the global
rollout of Reels was in preparation.
"Lasso was an experiment that was totally separate," said
Instagram's Mr. Stein, distinguishing it from Reels, integrated
into the heart of Instagram's products. "Reels is a big part of the
next chapter for Instagram for sure."
During his conversation with reporters, Mr. Shah noted that
Reels had been in the works long before TikTok's current distress
and declined to speculate on how the threats to its rival would
play out. But Captiv8's Mr. Subramanian called the timing
fortuitous for Instagram.
In the past few weeks, TikTok content creators have been
following Mr. Trump's threats to ban the app, with some producing
videos in which they jokingly packed a suitcase. The same jitters
have been felt by advertisers, Mr. Subramanian said.
"One minute you're telling people to go off Facebook and
Instagram toward TikTok, and the next TikTok might be
disappearing," he said.
Instagram is in a position to bolster the fortunes of TikTok
users who jump to Reels, said Mr. Subramanian. During past
launches, like of the ephemeral posts in Instagram Stories,
Instagram has heavily promoted content using the new formats,
subsidizing their adoption. Ahead of the Reels launch, Instagram
also spent heavily on recruiting content creators from TikTok, the
Journal reported last week.
Instagram has lots of tools in its toolbox, Mr. Subramanian
said. "If they give creators money and those creators hit the
lottery in terms of views and engagement, they'll likely
succeed."
Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 05, 2020 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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