Instagram’s latest push to rival TikTok brings new tools for creation and remixing of Reels

TikTok – the video-sharing platform – took the world by a popularity hurricane and now many social media companies are looking to catch up, introducing short videos to their platforms and growing their feature set. Instagram is one of those, with its answer to TikTok, Instagram Reels, which was introduced back in August 2020. And now, Engadget reports Meta has launched more tools to create Reels in an attempt to boost engagement with Reels and to have more creators making short videos.

Instagram update adds new tools for Reels, pushing harder to rival TikTok

The new tools are centered on making Reels more easily. First off, you can now remix not just videos in a Reel, but also photos – this way, you can use more to create a Reel. Additionally, Meta is now giving you more Remix layouts, including a green screen, a split screen, and a picture-in-picture reaction view. On top of that, you can choose to attach the remix to the end of an original Reel instead of having them side-by-side.

Speaking of cameras, you now get to record videos with the front and rear cameras at the same time using the Instagram camera.

And last but not least, Meta has announced it will be turning all videos posted on Instagram into Reels as long as they’re shorter than 15 minutes. However, this feature won’t work retroactively, so it will apply to new videos only. This feature will be rolling out in the coming weeks, and together with it, you’ll get a consolidated tab with all your videos and Reels on Instagram.

You may have heard that recently Instagram announced Subscriptions – a way for creators to make exclusive content for the most dedicated of their followers and therefore earn some money with it. All in all, Instagram is pushing to have more people create content on the platform, and is currently having some incentives like the Subscription feature or bonuses for creators of Reels. Monetization for Reels is reportedly coming in the second half of 2022, so we expect more features centered on Reels to be coming up in the next months.