When everyone was coming up with a TikTok alternative, Facebook joined the line too and launched Instagram Reels for users to create and post short videos on the platform. The social media giant has now extended the capability to its main app with the release of Facebook Reels.
The Mark Zuckerberg-owned platform Facebook now allows users in India to make short videos and post them as Reels. Here’s what we know about the new Facebook feature.
Facebook gets its own Instagram Reels
Facebook has added a short videos option on its platform for content creators in India. With this new Facebook feature, people will also be able to recommend their Instagram Reels on the Facebook app and reach a wider audience base. The feature is currently being tested and will release for everyone soon.
Facebook, in a statement to Reuters, said, “In India, we’re testing the ability for Instagram creators to choose to have their Reels recommended on Facebook… creators can reach new audiences and people can create and discover more entertaining content.”
Currently, there isn’t any dedicated Reels section in the Facebook app, upon scrolling down, you do get the ‘short videos’ section that enlists various short videos and allows you to create one for yourself too. Once you click on the create option, you will be able to record a 10 or 15-second video, add music, filters, and more edits to it, and then post.
However, when we checked Instagram to see if there is an option to recommend Reels to Facebook, we didn’t find out. It’s safe to say that the feature is currently being tested and will probably reach out to more people eventually.
Will Reels make it to WhatsApp?
For those who don’t know, Facebook, a few months ago, launched Instagram Reels to cash in on the TikTok ban in India and allow people to make short videos. This competes with the likes of the Indian TikTok clones such as Chingari, Bolo Indya, Roposso, Moj, and many others.
Presently, Instagram Reels has got quite popular and is being widely-used in the country. Since Facebook mostly tries unifying its apps with similar features (it brought Stories to Instagram first, followed by Facebook and WhatsApp), there are high chances that WhatsApp can get the ability to create Reels.
This will make the messaging app more versatile and who knows, Reels might work quite well for WhatsApp.
Notably, this is just speculation based on past instances. We still don’t know how Facebook plans to take forward the trend of Reels.
