If Facebook can’t buy a competing social platform, the company just copies it. Facebook bought Instagram and Whatsapp and could not buy Snapchat so they copied Snapchat and was that a good decision? YES, IT WAS!
For context, Instagram did not have the “story” feature and nor did Whatsapp or Facebook and now they all do! It was a great addition to Instagram in particular, catching the interest of more users to the platform daily. Of course, there’s not much Facebook can do in terms of deleting messages right after being read like Snapchat and that’s probably the only differentiator Snapchat has from them. Facebook doesn’t seem too bothered anyway since Snapchat users have declined over the years, especially after the Kylie Jenner tweet back in 2018 LOL.
New competition has come around from the Chinese social media app, TikTok, drawing the attention of the mass young population. With many controversial claims of spyware involved in the app, Facebook has not mentioned anything about buying TikTok and so we already know what Facebook tried to do.. COPY it! That is when Instagram reels came in the picture. After my parting experience using it, I can tell you that the feature works extremely similar to TikTok with music added to quick videos to be posted in a scroll-through page.
With the story feature being a GREAT addition, I assume the reels will be as well. Facebook is bound to remain ahead of the game giving their users no reason to download TikTok. Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy your scrolls through Instagram!