The ban on China apps in India has led to some of the major testings on social platforms. Instagram is all ready to give a surprise to its users across the world. It has been testing upon the functionality which is similar to TikTok and known as “Reels”.
Instagram has admitted it and states that it is its “response” to TikTok. An Instagram user can create a video of fifteen seconds, and later set it to any of the music, and splice it together from various different clips. Looping videos are similar to TikTok.
Followed by the launch of Reel function in Brazil last November, Instagram has now made it available to users in France and Germany. Reels clips can be made in dedicated spaces as well as on both user-profiles and the Explore tab. Soon, it would be also made available for Indian users and this makes a lot of sense.
Because of the rising tension between the government of India and China, TikTok was banned in India. This has also created an opportunity for both Instagram as well as YouTube to replace TikTok and take over the market. The rising popularity of short-form video would also be catered by this. Around 81 million users were there on TikTok till this February, in India. This could also be seen as the biggest market setup outside India. The studies also suggest that there could have been two hundred million-plus users if TikTok would not have been banned.
A huge number of influencers have been depending on TikTok for their livelihood.
The influencers are now only left with the option of either waiting for the ban to be removed from Indian markets or to switch over to YouTube or Instagram in order to stay connected with the audience. The launch of Reels by Instagram would make logical sense and could play a major role in helping Facebook to force out the rising rival.
In the due course of time, YouTube has also been testing the feature called Shorts for making videos.
In the first step, it might be just India, which has banned the app but several other countries such as the US, Australia are also looking forward to banning the app.