The U.S President has signed an executive order banning transactions with ByteDance which is the parent company of TikTok. The order cites The orders cite the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act and will take effect in 45 days time.
This comes at a time when Microsoft had announced that it is in negotiations to buy TikTok from ByteDance, naming September 15 as a deadline for negotiations.
While all this is going on, Instagram has launched Reels which is a competitor to TikTok hoping to lure some users from the popular app. Reels has been launched in 50 countries including US, UK, Japan, and Australia, on both iOS and Android.
Just like TikTok, Reels lets people create short-form videos set to music that can be shared with friends and followers and discovered while browsing the app. It’s the newest opportunity for Instagram to bring in users, increase the amount of time people spend in the app every day, and establish itself as a video entertainment platform.
Following the launch of Reels, ByteDance has accused Facebook of plagiarizing its product. Facebook faced similar accusations when they launched stories which had uncanny similarities to Snapchat. However, Stories quickly gained popularity and surpasses Snapchat in daily users and has continued to be a successful product. It is this history of success that is one of the reasons that makes the Instagram think that it can pull Reels off.