Facebook just launched a TikTok competitor called Lasso

Facebook/screenshots

• On Friday, Facebook
  released a direct competitor to TikTok, called Lasso. 
• Lasso is a social video app that caps posts to 15-seconds and
  lets creators add their favorite songs to play in the
  background. 
• The features and design of Lasso are almost identical to
  TikTok. 
• Facebook’s new, standalone app is a direct target at the
  growing user base of TikTok, which in September was the
  most downloaded social app in the US. 

Facebook
has cloned another popular social app. And it’s called
Lasso. 

The world’s largest social network is essentially re-creating its
own version of TikTok, the 15-second video app that’s become
increasingly popular in the US. In September, TikTok was the
most downloaded social app in the US. 

Read more:


 A
viral video app you’ve probably never heard of had more downloads
in September than Facebook, YouTube, or Snapchat

Facebook’s Lasso functions almost exactly the same as TikTok.
Videos are capped at 15 seconds, and users can add their favorite
tunes to play in the background. Facebook told Business Insider
that users will be able to choose from millions of songs in its
licensed catalog. 

New videos are seemingly endless — just swipe up for more content
to be served your way. As The Atlantic’s Tayor Lorenz pointed out
on Twitter, it appears
that Facebook seeded content on Lasso with videos that were
already on TikTok. 

Reports of Lasso’s creation were
leaked by TechCrunch two weeks ago. 

“It’s basically TikTok/Musically,” a
source told TechCrunch in the report. “It’s
full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny and focused on
creation.”

The rollout of Lasso on Friday was quiet, with no official
statement from the company on its website. When asked about the
new release by Business Insider, a Facebook spokesperson said:
“We’re excited about the potential here, and we’ll be gathering
feedback from people and creators.”

Though Facebook seems to be playing it cool with the Lasso
release, the company knows what’s at stake. TikTok’s fun layout
and interactions have attracted the attention of a young
demographic and as of June, the company said it had
500 million users worldwide. 

Facebook is no stranger to cloning an app to kick out an
incumbent. 

Instagram Stories notoriously copied the ephemeral nature
of Snapchat, and
by June of this year, it had twice as many users (400
million). Interestingly, Facebook had launched
its original Snapchat killer —
a standalone app called
Slingshot — in June of 2014. By
December 2015, however, Slingshot was no longer available in the
App Store. 

With the release of Lasso, the short-form video space
is heating up. Just yesterday, Vine founder, Dom
Hofmann,
announced that his new 6.5-second looping video
platform, byte, will launch in spring 2019. 

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