Instagram wants to lure TikTok refugees with new Reels features

Earlier today the US Supreme Court upheld the law that will ban TikTok in the US unless it sells by January 19. With the deadline fast approaching and no deal in sight, the app has promised to fully shut down on Sunday in the US even though the law doesn't actually compel it to (it only requires Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores).

TikTok's competitors are obviously very happy about that app's possible demise in the US, and so today Instagram announced two new features for Reels, its TikTok clone.

You can now discover the reels your friends are liking or adding notes to at the top right corner of the Reels tab. And you'll also see a reply bar, to make it easy to "start conversations around content you're enjoying", Instagram says. This will give you "even more opportunities for your reels to be seen by people who don't follow you yet".

You can see how this works in the screenshots above. On any given reel, the top right part will show who amongst your friends interacted with that particular reel. And you can then reply to their activity - so if a friend likes a reel, you can reply to that like.

Not at all shockingly, these features are rolling out in the US first, and will make it to other places at some point in the future.

Via