As its answer to TikTok, Reels is clearly a particularly important priority for Meta. Which is why a number of its platforms’ recent feature updates often involve Reels. And today’s announcement was not exempt from Meta’s push to make Reels just as competitive as TikTok.
On Thursday, Meta announced that it would be bringing Reels to Facebook Groups, mentioning it as one of three new ways for users to “to connect over shared interests.” Facebook group members and admins will be able to add “audio, text overlay and filters on top of their videos before sharing to bring their stories to life.”
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Beside their blog post announcement, the enabling of Reels in Groups was also announced via Facebook’s 6th Facebook Communities Summit, a screenshot of which is below.
Meta is also continuing to further connect its two flagship social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, to each other. In the same announcement, it was also revealed that you’ll be able to share public Facebook events to an Instagram story.
The screenshot of this feature that was shared with Digital Trends seems to show an in-progress Instagram story that features basic information for an upcoming Facebook event and what looks like a button link that says “See Event Page.”
Meta
While Reels struggles to keep up with TikTok, it is kind of nice to see Meta focusing more on developing the aspects of its platforms that aren’t TikTok clones, such as Facebook Groups and Events. Even if it means part of that development will involve bringing Reels along for the ride as well.
It seems like a more worthwhile pursuit for Meta would be to develop the unique parts of its platforms that its users still value instead of merely chasing TikTok or the next new thing that comes along.