In a recent announcement, Meta announced that it’s increasing the maximum reel length on Facebook to 90 seconds.
When the reel feature was first launched in September 2021, all the videos were limited to 60 seconds. But a few months after the video limit of Instagram reels was extended by 30 seconds, Meta decided to do the same for Facebook.
While constantly increasing video limits might seem like it’s defeating the purpose of short-format videos, this has been the norm for quite some time now. For example, YouTube Shorts’ video length limit has been extended to 60 seconds, whereas TikTok now allows creators to make the content as long as 10 minutes.
Facebook is strongly rallying content creators, going out of its way to boost their business.
For the same reason, the tech giant also rolled out a new template feature that’ll make it easier for creators to use trending reel templates automatically for their own content.
Meta is also planning to add a new “automated reel” where the platform will collect your memories over the year and turn it into a fun reel all by itself. This feature has already been seen in Instagram, where your Highlights are automatically converted to reels, and the users are given the option to post them publicly.
The new features seem to be aimed at helping creators who aren’t experts at editing or camera handling. For instance, a new reel feature called “Groove” will help you automatically align and sync parts of your video with the audio. We have often seen creators struggle with synchronization, which leads to poor-quality content, but not if they use Groove.
Reels are the future
A close look at the three popular platforms for short-video content— Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok reveals that the new feature updates on Facebook are quite similar to what Instagram and Tiktok are already offering. In fact, the features on Instagram were added just a few months ago. It looks like Meta used Instagram reels as a test platform to see how the creators react to these new features.
The introduction of reels on Facebook is seen as a move against TikTok’s growing popularity which was certainly a threat to Instagram reels.
By offering reels on both platforms and allowing cross-posting, Meta is hoping to entice the creators with this integrated marketing platform.
Reels are the future of content for now and essentially the most profitable marketing tool.
After its debut in 2019, reels have changed the preferred content format forever. Even Meta itself agrees that the popularity of reels has been growing at rocket speed and has almost doubled in the last year. Even the number of reel reshares has increased dramatically in the last few months for both platforms.
So naturally, Meta is investing wholeheartedly into it. Whatever its purpose is, it’s only going to benefit the creators, making it easier for them to grow and reach out to new user markets.
