For about two weeks, Instagram Reels has also arrived in Italy, the new Instagram function to create, edit and share short videos very similar to those of TikTok, the app that has had great success above all thanks to its comic and music videos. In addition to Italy, Reels has arrived in dozens of other countries, including the United States, and in recent days several of his reviews have come out: Reels has been crushed by almost all of them, both for technical reasons, related to its functioning, and for reasons more practical, related to the creation and use of videos by users.
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What is Reels
For those who are still at “Instagram it is used to share photos”, Reels is an internal function of Instagram that allows you to create and above all edit short videos of 15 seconds (adding effects, sounds and songs in the background). They are partly similar to Stories, but offer greater possibilities for editing and “post-production”. Once a Reel has been created, it can be published both in Stories and in the photo feed. To create a Reel you have to go where you go to create the Stories; to see one made by others you have to hope to find someone among the Stories or photos, or – to be able to see many in series, as happens on TikTok – go to the “Explore” function, accessible from the magnifying glass at the bottom of the screen (between the “little house” and the “+”).
The Stories – the biggest hit among the news introduced by Instagram in recent years – had arrived in 2016 and were clearly inspired by the content made popular by Snapchat. The Reels are even more blatantly copied (“cloned”, someone wrote) from the TikTok videos.
The criticisms
From a technical point of view, the Reels were considered by all to be considerably worse than the TikTok videos. Many reviews explain that, after getting a little carried away, on TikTok it takes even a few seconds to create and edit videos, also using an advanced algorithm that is able to suggest which songs to use and synchronize music and music in a generally effective way. Images. As explained by the New York Times among others, some functions are simply absent in the Reels, while others are much more cumbersome than in TikTok. In short, in short, it seems that the same video is better and is done with less effort on TikTok.
The fact that TikTok is more enjoyable and faster to use is already a major disincentive to using Reels, but there are other more practical issues that many believe Reels will struggle to break through.
First of all, the Reels are far from within reach: both making them and looking at them requires in fact to perform a couple of actions that on TikTok are much more immediate. On TikTok, videos are the only type of content in the app, and you just need to open it and scroll from top to bottom to see them one after the other, suggested by an algorithm with which, according to The Verge, «no other app seems to be able to to compete”. On Instagram, on the contrary, the Reels are only a part of the whole, among other things for now not very visible and therefore not very relevant. What's more, most of Instagram's Reels today are nothing more than TikTok videos (therefore with the TikTok logo) reloaded on Instagram. Also according to The Verge, many of Instagram's “original” Reels are based on fashions and memes that spread right on TikTok and only then arrive on Instagram.
In the article “Why Reels sucks”, Vox pointed out another relevant difference: on TikTok it seems that it is often unknown users who set trends and achieve success, able to exploit the app algorithm to their advantage. and the fact that it also allows you to send your videos to other users with whom you do not know or follow; on Instagram, however, it is difficult for a stranger's Reel, even if beautiful and original, to go particularly far. “TikTok was not successful because Will Smith decided to sign up,” wrote Vox, “but because it intrigued young and creative users with its options for video editing and with an algorithm that made it possible to be known in a few hours.”
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Beyond the criticisms
Despite the many and harsh criticisms of Reels – Taylor Lorenz, of the New York Times, called it “the worst function ever” – however, we must also keep in mind that updates and new functions are not always added to have great success. Sometimes, especially in the case of large and widespread apps such as Instagram, they are used by Instagram (or even Facebook, which controls it together with WhatsApp) to better understand something about its users, or even just to “guard” a land, leaving it not is an exclusive of the competition, in this case TikTok.
For Instagram it would be enough to try to make it easier to access and use the Reels to certainly increase their use, as it did with the Stories. And there are already those who have talked about small tests done by Instagram to highlight the Reels more, right from the main page of the app. And anyway, every project or new feature of an app or service doesn't necessarily have to work. You try many things, knowing in advance that only a few will work: as Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO said, about the Fire Phone, Amazon's bankrupt smartphone: “If you think that was a failure, know that we are working right now on much bigger failures, some of which will make the Fire Phones look just like a small and insignificant stumbling block “.
