for several months, Instagram I watched and waited to see what would happen to rival Tychok under A New federal law banning the app In the United States. On Sunday, the day he entered the law, Instagram pounced.
The social media app, which is owned by Meta, announced a new app called Edits, a video editing product that appeared to be a clone of Capcut, which millions of people use to compile short videos for Tiktok. Capcut and Tiktok are owned by Bytedance, the Chinese internet giant, leading to US scrutiny of the apps on national security grounds.
“There’s a lot going on in the world right now,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a post to the platform on Sunday. “No matter what happens, we believe it’s our duty to make the most compelling creative tools for those who create videos.”
Tiktok and its Sister Apps, Capcut and Lemon8, have given us social media apps for a long time. Tiktok has 170 million US users, it said in legal filings Can’t stand the darkness Even temporarily because it would suffer a competitive disadvantage in one of its largest markets.
Late Saturday, hours before a federal law banned Tiktok, Tiktok, Capcut, and Lemon8 became unavailable, though Tiktok came back to life on Sunday as President-elect Donald Trump said Plan to issue an executive order This week the ban will stop.
Tiktok’s competitors did not wait for straws from the situation. Mr. Mosseri described the edits as being specifically designed for creators to edit video on their phones and to provide ideas for other videos they might want to publish later.
Mr. Mosseri said creators can use edits to work on videos and publish them to any platform they want, not just Instagram. Influencers often use Capcut to work on videos and post them to multiple platforms, including Tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Mr Mosseri said people can pre-edit in the Apple App Store starting Sunday and that the app will be available for Android in February.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out about witnessing the Tiktok dilemma. The Silicon Valley company has hired lobbyists to find that American technology companies should come first, as part of winning a tech race against China.
in meeting With staff on board last week, META’s chief marketing officer also said the company needs to prepare for the potential migration of Tiktok users to Meta apps and should devote staff and other resources to those possible developments. Instagram also changed its layout for some users last week, formatting content into a rectangular vertical shape reminiscent of Tiktok.
Instagram has taken a long angle to mimic Tiktok’s success. In 2020, Instagram launched Reels, an almost exact clone of the Tiktok Marquee short video format. Reels has grown to be one of the most popular features on Instagram and Facebook.
US internet users said they would be more likely to watch Instagram reels if Tiktok was banned, according to a recent TD Cowen survey of 2,500 consumers. Reels will appeal to 29 percent of respondents, while 23 percent said they would spend more time on YouTube shorts, and 15 percent would look for a new app, according to the survey.
Among advertisers, Instagram’s advantage seemed even more pronounced, with 56 percent of ad buyers telling TD Cowen in a survey last quarter that their clients wanted advertising reels this year. Another 24 percent preferred YouTube shorts, while 20 percent preferred TikTok.
Madison Malone Kercher She contributed reporting from New York.
