Facebook-owned Instagram, it appears, has capitalized a lot from India banning TikTok, the video creating app that owned by China’s Bytedance. With the United States also looking to ban TikTok, Instagram’s Reels may be the solution that content creators are looking for.
Launched earlier this week, Reels made its India debut at 7.30 pm on the night of July 8, 2020. If you do have Instagram on your phone and want to use reels, the app may have in all likelihood updated on your phone, so you can directly use the feature.
Instagram launches Reels in India: Here's how you install and use the feature to make TikTok-like videos
In case you don’t see the update, here’s what you do
- Visit your Goolge Play Store or Apple Store, go to Instagram and tap on the update button
- Once you open Instagram, tap on the Instagram camera. Reels will be right next to Boomerang, Superzoom and Layout
- Click on Reels and check out the vast array of music available on the IG Library. Unlike Instagram music, Reels has a far wider music collection, ranging from Bob Dylan to Lady Gaga
- Much like TikTok, Reels also come with an option to record original voice besides lipsyncing.
- You also have the option of editing the videos before sharing it, giving you the chance of becoming a content creator
Users with a Public Instagram account will be able to share Reels on Explore. This will build a better chance for the Reel to be seen and discovered by the wider Instagram community.
India on June 29 banned 59 apps with Chinese links, including hugely popular TikTok, UC Browser and Cam Scanner, saying they were prejudicial to sovereignty, integrity and security of the country. The ban came in the backdrop of the standoff with Chinese troops in Eastern Ladakh.
Meanwhile, on Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that the United States has to take a different path on China as the previous policy of helping them open up their economy with the belief that this would lead to more political freedom has not worked.
"The theory of the case that was more economic opening will lead to more political freedoms, more fundamental rights being provided to the Chinese people, just turned out not to have been true. It just didn't work. I'm not criticizing those who came before; we can now plainly see that it didn't work, and that means the United States has to take a different path," Pompeo told Tony Perkins of Washington Watch in an interview.