If anything is qualified to be a ’TikTok killer’ it’s Instagram, and it seems like the app is readying a new feature that may strike directly at Bytedance’s buzzy social app.
The feature is called ‘Clips’, and it has been uncovered by source-code digger Jane Manchun Wong, who’s been reverse-engineering the latest version of Instagram’s app.
“Instagram has been working on a new Story Camera mode called ‘Clips’ since early July,” she wrote. “Just like TikTok, ‘Clips’ allows users to record segments of videos into a single video Story. Just like TikTok, users can overlay music on clips. Just like TikTok, users can adjust the speed and timer of each video clips.”
What she doesn’t say, is that there’s a way this feature would NOT be just like TikTok: Instagram already has the user-generated-content licences in place for the music aspects.
For now, Clips appears to be something that Instagram is testing: we’ll have to wait and see whether the feature rolls out more widely in the months ahead – and then gauge what impact it has on TikTok’s popularity.
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