Facebook Reels, Meta’s short-form video offering, will now allow users to submit Reels as long as 90 seconds according to new capabilities recently revealed. Meta has announced that it is releasing new tools to ease the creation of fun and engaging videos for Reels.

 Meta expects most users to receive these adjustments well since they aim at giving creators and businesses on the site more flexibility. 

Facebook Reels new capabilities

Facebook Reels’ new features and capabilities include:

• Longer videos: Users will now be able to publish longer short-form videos up to 90 seconds long, as opposed to the prior limit of 60 seconds.
• Make videos from Memories: Reels creators can now quickly put together ready-made Reels from their Facebook Memories. 
• Trending templates to ease video creation: Facebook Reels now has new “trending” templates giving users the option to imitate the format of the videos in their own feeds.
• Grooves feature will match videos to song beats: Users will also now have access to Grooves, a tool that will intuitively match the distinct rhythms of a video with the beat of a selected song or sound.

The updates are a replica of Instagram Reels implemented in June

These modifications are identical to those introduced to Instagram Reels in June, and some speculate that they were a success. Shiv Gupta, the managing partner at digital marketing training company, U of Digital, claims that since Meta has already tested this product on Instagram and is now implementing it on Facebook, the stats must be favorable.

With these modifications, businesses and individual creators will have more flexibility to leverage current trends and connect with audiences with relevant content by utilizing tools like the trending templates. 2 billion daily active users can now use Facebook Reels.

Additionally, the modifications could make Facebook Reels more available and less difficult for creators through the new templates as well as the Memories integration according to Ann Handley, a digital marketing influencer and social media strategist. In contrast to the TikTok audience, with the new updates, Meta encourages less experienced creators or those who don’t view themselves as producers.

Short-form videos are becoming increasingly important

Short-form video is becoming more and more significant for entertainment and on social media among businesses and content creators. The global market for short-form video platforms is expected to hit $2.3 billion in 2030

The majority of these planned modifications are modeled after TikTok, a video-sharing app with over 1 billion users worldwide. Teenagers were initially drawn to TikTok by its brief DIY creator films, full-screen mobile display, and auto-play capabilities. It is currently one of the most interesting social networking sites ever because of its potent recommendation system. In 2020, Meta released Instagram Reels, a competitor to TikTok, and the following year released Facebook Reels to enable cross-posting between Instagram and Facebook).

Since then, Reels has received numerous improvements that mimic TikTok capabilities. For instance, the new Grooves product imitates TikTok’s Sound Sync feature. In typical Meta fashion, they are imitating TikTok, as Gupta puts it. In any of these maneuvers, Meta is merely attempting to skate toward the game rather than “getting ahead of it.”