Meta is testing a version of Instagram where all video content is posted as Reel, the company confirmed to Gizmodo on Thursday in an email.
“This is something we’re testing (and we’ve been!) With parts of our global community,” wrote a spokesman for Meta, the parent company of Instagram. Who characterized the change “as part of our efforts to simplify and enhance the video experience on Instagram.”
For most current Instagram users, posting a video asks the app to ask if you want to share your content as a “post” or as a Reel. Posts are displayed in the main feed that is filled with content that a user is following (in addition to ads). The rollers, on the other hand, are sent to an independent channel that works much more like Tiktok. Anyone’s videos can appear at any time on algorithmically generated Reels channels by a user, and the audio of one Reel can make a soundtrack of another. From the beginnings of Reels, there have been both options.
However, both options could soon become one. If you are part of the test group, if you try to make a video post on Instagram, a notification will appear saying that “video posts are now shared as rollers,” according to a screenshot shared on Twitter by the social media consultant Matt Navarra. In practice, this means that Instagram is considering removing the option to share a video only with your followers. Instead, everything that is published in the app that is not a still image could end up in the endless and lawless Reels.
Instagram now makes every video a roll
h / t @ChristinaSBG pic.twitter.com/YLRDhT1nw0
– Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) June 30, 2022
The change is one of the numbers Meta seems to be testing on its platforms right now. Two weeks ago, Instagram announced that other interface updates were being tested with selected users, including one that would make posts appear in full screen on the main channel. That, yes, looks a lot like Tiktok again. Meta also seems to be leading Facebook down the Tiktok path, filling users ’feeds with content posted from outside their group of friends and driving more Reels as well.
And Gizmodo is left wondering: Why? Who wants this? Wouldn’t it be nice to maintain some differentiation between all these social networking platforms? Instagram is becoming Tiktok, Tiktok is trying to be Instagram, Snapchat is imitating Twitter, and under Elon Musk’s theoretical tutelage, Twitter could also replicate TikTok. What’s the point? It is almost enough to force them to remove these applications completely. But first just one more video.