Instagram May Launch Reels as a Standalone App
Meta-owned Instagram is reportedly toying with the idea of releasing a standalone application for its short-form video feature, Reels.
Reuters reports that Instagram head Adam Mosseri told staff of the potential change this week, although Meta has not publicly commented on the claims. The original source for the report is an anonymous source who spoke to The Information.
From the outside, the move makes some sense, especially as primary Reels-competitor TikTok’s status in the United States remains uncertain. TikTok briefly went offline in the United States to comply with a ban. However, returned online after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to give TikTok an additional 75 days to find a non-Chinese majority owner.
It remains unclear if a standalone Reels app would mean that Reels is no longer directly integrated into Instagram, or if Reels would co-exist across two separate applications. It’s also not obvious if Meta would make substantial changes to Reels to better compete against TikTok and the growing YouTube Shorts short-form video content platform.
TikTok has a massive presence, with a reported 170 million users just in the United States, 50 million of whom use the app daily. TikTok has more than one billion active monthly users worldwide.
It is a staggeringly colossal video content platform that Meta has been trying to topple for years, having failed miserably with its Lasso video app, launched in November 2018 and discontinued in favor of Reels in July 2020.
Instagram has more daily active users than TikTok. However, social media users and industry analysts have long claimed that TikTok’s algorithm and content delivery strategy encourages significantly better engagement than competing platforms, like Reels. A standalone Reels experience alone is unlikely to move the needle much unless it includes other changes.
Meta has also routinely integrated familiar features into Instagram and Reels, including the recently released video app, “Edits,” that looks an awful lot like TikTok’s acclaimed CapCut editing app. To better compete against TikTok’s popularity, Meta also recently enabled Instagram users to share longer Reels, up to three minutes, as Social Media Today reported last month.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
