Looks like the Meta is really making a big push for Reels. Social media consultant Matt Navarro posted a screenshot on Twitter showing a notification about an experimental Instagram feature that says all video posts will be shared as reels in the app. If your account is public, it means anyone can discover your video and use your original audio to create their own reel. Only friends will see your video if your profile is private, but other users can still remix your Reel and download it as part of their remix. The only way to ensure that no one uses your Reel for remixes is to turn off the option in Settings or disable it for every video you post.
As TechCrunch notes, the move comes as no surprise as TikTok-style videos have quickly become a popular format on both Instagram and Facebook. When he revealed the company’s fourth quarter earnings report for 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that Reels is now the fastest growing content format on Meta. Meta chief product officer Chris Cox also called Reels a “bright spot” for the company in a recent memo shared with employees, warning them of “serious times” due to slowing growth. He also said that one of the projects that Meta intends to focus on for the second half of 2022 is monetizing Reels as quickly as possible.
Apparently, time spent watching short videos has more than doubled since last year, with 80 percent of that growth coming from Facebook. That’s why the company will go so far as to redesign the homepages of Instagram and Facebook to better include short videos. Converting all video posts to Reels will give the company more content to distribute, which in turn will lead to more video watch time on the platform and greater potential ad revenue when the format is finally monetized. However, not all of Instagram’s experimental features make it to widespread use, and it remains to be seen whether this one will survive the testing phase.
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