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- The Newsstand September 2020
The Newsstand September 2020
Instagram launches Reels, challenging TikTok with 15-second music videos, offering businesses a new creative platform to showcase products amid platform tensions.

Instagram’s New TikTok-Like Reels
Instagram did it again. The Facebook-owned app has launched Reels, a short-form-video feature allowing users to create 15-second looping video clips that are set to music. Sounds familiar? Because it is. Given TikTok’s enormous success (just over 2 billion downloads), it is no surprise Instagram is attempting to compete. As a business owner, this new feature will allow you to create short videos of you making your products with music set in the background. Pretty cool!
Instagram is no stranger to copying other successful apps, most notably Snapchat Stories. Rather than establishing a new audience, Instagram utilizes its popularity and adds features known to work well. And the TikTok-like expansion couldn’t come at a better time. The US, like other countries, are considering banning the Chinese app due to privacy concerns. Whether TikTok will be allowed to continue operating in the US or will be replaced by Reels remains to be seen.

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