Instagram Reels Feels Exactly Like TikTok

The app icon is different. The navigation is different. The algorithm doesn’t exactly know what I like yet.

But, big picture, the experience feels exactly the same. Most of the songs are the same, some of the influencers are the same, the stolen footage from YouTube or other video platforms is the same, and to top it all off, some of the videos are taken right from TikTok, complete with the TikTok logo at the bottom right.

Facebook launched Instagram Reels today, which builds a TikTok-like experience right into Instagram. And, not incidentally, kicks a platform when it’s already down, thanks to both President Trump recent ban talk and its reputation as a privacy nightmare. The new Instagram feature has long been in development, notably being tested in Brazil, but today it launched in 50 countries including France, Japan, Germany, the U.K., Australia, Spain, Mexico, Argentina and the United States.

Of course, there are differences.

The videos are 15 seconds long, not a full minute, in what might be a back-handed reference to the original short-form video platform, Vine, which had 6-second videos. And, they’re on Instagram, not TikTok.

Besides that ... not much else.

In other words, it’s Snapchat Stories 2.0, where Facebook saw a popular feature on another social platform and copy-pasted it into Instagram. The experience is essentially TikTok inside Instagram. You watch a video, double-tap to like it, or tap another little icon to make a comment. You swipe up, just like TikTok, to move to the next video.

Of course, there are other differences as well: a different video creation and editing interface. There’s also an innovative way of aligning one video clip with another, and and equally innovative way of selecting just the right part of a song to go with your video.

But most critically, perhaps, the semi-dazed barely-there mental state you achieve on TikTok by mindlessly swiping up, video after video, hour after hour, to be entertained by yet another tiny segment of a cat batting at a dog, a teen doing impossible things with a football/baseball bat/basketball/skateboard, or a gorgeous nature setting is precisely the same on Instagram Reels.

“Reels invites you to create fun videos to share with your friends or anyone on Instagram,” Instagram says in its announcement blog post. “Reels in Explore offers anyone the chance to become a creator on Instagram and reach new audiences on a global stage.”

There’s no doubt it’s fun and it’s engaging.

The question is whether it will keep Instagram users from joining TikTok, as adding Stories to Instagram paused Snapchat’s growth. And, perhaps more importantly, given TikTok has already achieved stratospheric status, pull some of those users back into the Facebook fold.

Talk of a TikTok ban in the U.S. will certainly help achieve those goals, and if Microsoft does end up buying the mobile platform and doing a Skype on it, that will too.

In the meantime, Facebook will keep doing what Facebook does: find great features elsewhere and incorporate them into its own apps.

“Reels gives people new ways to express themselves, discover more of what they love on Instagram, and help anyone with the ambition of becoming a creator take center stage,” Instagram says.

Instagram Reels feels exactly like Tiktok. And that, I guess, is the point.