The Reel Deal
If you’ve gotten the latest Instagram update where the magnifying glass for the “explore” tab has suddenly morphed into a blackhole of endless swiping through 15 second videos, congrats – you’ve entered the world of Reels.
Like any new update, we heard outroar and annoyance at this feature that we had no clue about and why it looked an awful lot like that platform that broke the internet but quickly got banned due to…other issues. We wanted our easy access to explore back!
If you were as confused as we were, let us break it down to you in a nutshell: Dubsmash moved so that Vine could crawl so that Musically could walk so that TikTok could jog so that Reels could run.
We’ve seen this feature originate about 6 years ago – short, catchy videos where people can lip sync, dance, act, unleash their true potential as an internet meme, and everything in between. We’ve also seen versions of it emerge, have its small stint over the course of a few months, and quickly die down as any trend does. Somehow, we always hopped back on to Instagram or Facebook and treated those platforms as our primary source of entertainment.
What happens when you get that format to our main source? You guessed it – marketing magic. The possibility of going viral has increased exponentially and content creators are exploiting the HECK out of it. Appease the algorithm and you might just be a featured Reel that pops up on everyone’s explore.
And it’s not just people dancing or performing strange skits on the app, we have a variety of content being pumped into this feature on the daily. Activists, lifestyle bloggers, even politicians are using this to get their message out into the world. TikTok may have been “cringe” but because of the accessibility on our primary platform of Instagram, Reels is seemingly more “woke”.
While Instagram has explored multiple formats in the past, and have been successful, we can see a pattern form here. Snapchat had stories that lasted only 24 hours, YouTube had long form videos and TikTok had the 15 second video format all before Instagram did. Coincidence?
Of course Instagram offers different features and has a wider reach than the rest of those applications, but is it right on their part for “borrowing” these formats? We’re going to choose to be in the grey area about this.
All we know is that the next big thing is here and the journey with Reels is only beginning.
