Business News Digital

Meta adds Reels functionality to Facebook in 150+ markets

By | Published on Wednesday 23 February 2022

Facebook

That company that insists on calling itself Meta has announced that it is rolling out its TikTok style feature Reels across the Facebook platform in 150+ countries. And it is also ramping up the ways Reel makers can generate cash from their, erm, Reeling.

Reels began on Meta’s Instagram platform, of course. It enables and encourages users to create short-form videos in a TikTok stylee, also making it easier to select and synchronise musical clips into said videos. The company began experimenting with adding Reels functionality to Facebook last year, ahead of this big roll out of the feature.

The company said yesterday: “Watching video is half of time spent on Facebook and Instagram, and Reels is our fastest growing content format by far. We’re focused on making Reels the best way for creators to get discovered, connect with their audience and earn money. We also want to make it fun and easy for people to find and share relevant and entertaining content”.

TikTok’s impact on its main rivals has been significant in the last couple of years, with YouTube also adding its TikTok style Shorts feature. And given music is generally more key to this kind of short-form video, that’s good news for the music industry. Not least because, with the inbuilt music library feature, platforms can’t rely so much on the copyright safe harbour when trying to play hard ball in licensing deal negotiations.

As for how the online creators behind the most popular Reel videos can make some more money, Meta said yesterday: “We’re creating a variety of opportunities for creators to earn money for their reels. Our Reels Play bonus programme, part of our $1 billion creator investment, pays eligible creators up to $35,000 a month based on the views of their qualifying reels”.

Like its rivals, Facebook is developing other ad-based and direct-to-fan tools to help creators monetise their content, so that those creators can both get a cut of ad income and have their fans directly make payments via memberships or digital gifting.

And while those tools aren’t available in all markets yet, platforms seem to recognise better monetisation tools are key to keeping the best creators in an increasingly competitive market place, so presumably rolling them out into new markets in due course is something of a priority.



READ MORE ABOUT: |