If you’ve ever wondered just how much of a threat TikTok poses to the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook, then Mark Zuckerberg just recently decided to clear things up when he called this competitor the reason , where Facebook lost users for the first time. Now, the company is reportedly all set to roll out its own TikTok clone to other parts of its social network in an attempt to counter these abandonment of the platform.
And to get into the details, the social network is officially launching “Facebook Reels”, a Facebook-centric version of a feature that was first launched on Instagram last year. The company has been actively experimenting with “Reels in Feed” for some time now, and also encourages users to post their videos on various company services. However, with the latest launch, Reels will be available as a standalone feature on Facebook in over 150 countries. Not to mention, Facebook will also be promoting Reels in even more parts of its app. That is, in addition to placing videos at the top of the user’s feed, the company will allow users to share videos inside Stories, as well as provide the ability for users to turn Stories messages into Reels.
Facebook Watch, which usually focuses on longer videos, will also host Reels content. What’s more, the company also says it will start experimenting with recommending “suggested videos” in some users’ news feeds very soon. In other words: there will be videos in virtually every part of Facebook where users typically view and share videos. This expansion will indeed be a very serious test for the company, which at one time nevertheless decided to compete with TikTok, and thereby attract more young people to its platform.
Mark Zuckerberg has also made it clear that he believes Reels is the best way to reach those users, many of whom are increasingly spending their time on TikTok rather than Facebook. And by the way, during a conversation with Meta’s management earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is “in the middle of moving our own services to short videos like Reels.” Well, in order to further stimulate the creators of Reels, the social network also decided to make the monetization features available to a much larger number of people. If you’re not aware, monetization features currently include banner ads and promotional stickers, but the company plans to start testing Stars, which should allow fans to buy “gifts” for creators.
