After testing the feature in Brazil towards the end of last year, Instagram is now officially launching its ‘Reels’ feature across 50 countries today (August 5).
In a similar fashion to TikTok, Reels allows Instagram users to create short form clips up to 15-seconds long, and they can also add popular music, filters and effects to their videos.
Reels can be shared to a special Reels tab but can also be sent privately to friends, or can be shared onto a user’s Feed or Story.
Speaking to Press Association on the new feature, Instagram’s vice president – Vishal Shah – said: “[Introducing] Stories in 2016 was one where we give full credit to Snapchat in terms of inventing the format and we then absolutely took it and made it our own.
“I think of short-form video in very much the same vein – TikTok certainly didn’t invent short-form video, I think they’ve done a lot of really amazing work to make it their own, and I think we’ve been inspired by that great work, but then want to take that and integrate that into Instagram in a different way.”
Reels is currently being rolled out in in more than 50 countries including the UK, USA, India, Brazil, France, Japan and Australia.