Facebook Home and Instagram Reels get new features: check out the details

Instagram short video posts as Reels

Instagram Reels are quite popular and are the easiest way for media consumption on social media platforms. Now, the Facebook-owned company said that they’re bringing more creative tools and the full-screen experience to video posts too. In the coming weeks, the new video posts shorter than 15 minutes will be shared as Reels. 

Instagram says that videos posted prior to this change will remain as videos and won’t become reels. Instagram public account videos will now be reels and they could be eligible to be recommended and seen by more people on Instagram. Currently, this only applies to reels that are under 90 seconds long. The company also says that it will consolidate the video and Reels tab on your profile, so there will be one home for all of your videos.

Beyond this, Instagram says that it also expanding tools for Remix to help enhance the way users tell stories on Instagram when collaborating. In the coming weeks, Instagram will allow users to remix public photos and create their own unique Reel. They can choose between a green screen, horizontal, or vertical split-screen to add their own video commentary to existing reels.

Facebook brings a new ‘Feeds’ tab

Facebook has introduced a new ‘Feeds’ tab to access content from friends, family, pages, etc. The main screen you see when the app is open is now called ‘Home’, which is a long overdue change. However, the big news is that there’s an addition tab in the app and it is called ‘Feeds’. This tab is sorted in reverse chronological order like what the now ‘Home’ used to be before the algorithm took over. The Feeds tab has a few filters like you can have it show everything or just stuff from friends, groups, pages or favourites.

This is a curated list of the friends and pages that you care about. The new ‘Home’ feed is positioned as “more of a discovery engine for you to find and follow new content and creators through recommendations”.

There are no “Suggested For You” posts in Feeds. The shortcut bar to house the buttons is at the bottom of the Facebook app on iOS, and at the top on Android. The new Home and Feeds tabs are rolling out to a small section of Facebook users on iOS and Android and everyone will get it next week.