For months, instagram has watched and waited to see what would happen to its rival TikTok under a new federal law that would ban the app in the United States. On Sunday, the day the law went into effect, instagram pounced.
The Meta-owned social media app announced a new app called Edits, a video editing product that appeared to be a clone of CapCut, which millions of people use to stitch together short videos for TikTok. CapCut and TikTok are owned by ByteDance, the Chinese internet giant, which led to scrutiny of the apps by the United States for national security reasons.
“There's a lot going on in the world right now,” Adam Mosseri, head of instagram, said in a post on the platform on Sunday. “No matter what, we believe it's our job to create the most engaging creative tools for those of you who create videos.”
TikTok and its sister apps, CapCut and Lemon8, have long competed with American social media apps. TikTok has 170 million users in the U.S. and had said in legal filings that it couldn't afford to shut down even temporarily because it would suffer a competitive disadvantage in one of its largest markets.
On Saturday night, hours before the federal law banning TikTok went into effect, TikTok, CapCut and Lemon8 became unavailable, although TikTok came back to life on Sunday when President-elect Donald J. Trump said he planned to broadcast an executive order this week. to stop the ban.
TikTok's competitors have not waited to take advantage of the situation. Mosseri described Edits as designed specifically for creators to edit videos on their phones and save ideas for other videos they want to post later.
Mosseri said creators could use Edits to work on videos and post them to any platform they wanted, not just instagram. CapCut was often used by influencers to work on videos and post them on multiple platforms, including TikTok, instagram, and YouTube.
Mosseri said people could pre-order Edits on Apple's App Store starting Sunday and the app would be available for Android in February.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has spoken publicly about how the TikTok dilemma is playing out. His Silicon Valley company has hired lobbyists to argue that American tech companies should go first, as part of winning a technology race against China.
In a meeting with employees last week, Meta's chief marketing officer also said the company needed to prepare for a possible migration of TikTok users to Meta apps and should dedicate staff and other resources to those possible developments.
instagram has long tried to imitate the success of TikTok. In 2020, instagram launched Reels, an almost exact clone of TikTok's short video format. Reels have become one of the most popular features on instagram and facebook.
American internet users have said they would likely watch instagram Reels if TikTok were banned, according to a recent TD Cowen survey of 2,500 consumers. According to the survey, Reels would appeal to 29 percent of respondents, while 23 percent said they would spend more time on YouTube Shorts and 15 percent would look for a new app.
Among advertisers, instagram's advantage seemed even starker: 56 percent of ad buyers told TD Cowen in a survey last quarter that their clients wanted to advertise more on Reels this year. Another 24 percent preferred YouTube Shorts, while 20 percent preferred TikTok.
