After months of anticipation, Instagram has launched its short-form video feature Reels on a global stage. Here are four things marketers need to know – including which brands are already doing well on Reels and why the timing could be perfect for Instagram.
The world of social media is abuzz with the news that Reels, a new feature that allows you to edit and publish short videos set to music on Instagram, launched Wednesday in the US and more than 50 other countries.
Reels was first launched in November of last year in Brazil, where it is known as Cenas. Instagram used the feedback from Brazilian users to tweak and improve the feature before rolling it out more widely: Reels launched in France and Germany on 24th June, in India on 8th July, and now has been rolled out to more than 50 additional countries worldwide including the US and the UK.
To call Reels similar to TikTok would be underselling it: the resemblance is uncanny, even down to the location of the play button and view count, as the Wall Street Journal’s Senior Personal Technology Columnist and Executive Editor of Video, Joanna Stern, pointed out on Twitter. The biggest difference between the two is that Reels videos are currently limited to 15 seconds while TikTok videos can be up to a minute in length – and of course, that Reels is native to Instagram.
Article Source Four things that marketers need to know about Reels, Instagram’s answer to TikTok