It’s been in testing for a while, however immediately, Instagram has formally introduced that customers can now reply to post comments with Reels, offering one other strategy to combine Reels into the Instagram course of.

As you possibly can see on this instance, now, whenever you reply to a touch upon a put up, you’ll even have the choice to faucet on the blue Reels button to create a video reply, which can then seem as a sticker you could ship to the commentor.

Right here’s one other have a look at the method in motion (through @TheBKH):

It’s one other approach to assist Instagram enhance engagement, whereas additionally leaning into the short-form video development. It’s additionally, unsurprisingly, nearly similar to the identical characteristic that TikTok added in June final 12 months.

Instagram’s added some new shade choices to the sticker, however primarily it’s the identical factor. Which, given Instagram’s more moderen historical past, is just about par for the course – although it is possible for you to to answer to feedback on common posts and movies with Reels too, which expands the operate a bit.

On one hand, as with all of Instagram’s copycat capabilities, it feels a bit low cost, a bit stale perhaps to see it merely re-create what TikTok already does.

However, it’s working – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famous within the firm’s most up-to-date earnings announcement that Reels is now “the first driver of engagement development” on the platform, with tens of millions of customers now interacting with Reels clips daily. If Meta can preserve just a few extra brief video followers on its apps, as a substitute of seeing them drift off to TikTok, that’s a win, and that, in itself, is probably going sufficient to justify its continued copying of TikTok’s options.

However I keep that if Meta actually needs to win again youthful customers, it wants to return out with new, distinctive options, and prepared the ground with the newest developments. A side-effect of replication is that you’re inherently following another person, and if you happen to’re not seen because the chief within the newest shifts, you’re unlikely to be the cool app, and the place the place youthful customers are primarily interacting.

Meta, after all, is aware of this. In reality, it’s a key a part of Fb’s development story – as soon as Fb overtook MySpace as the first social app of selection amongst mong customers again in 2005, MySpace tried to repeat Fb’s key instruments, in a last-ditch effort to stem the person migration.

That clearly didn’t work, and Fb finally grew to become the place to be, which then propelled the corporate to larger and higher issues.

TikTok is on an identical trajectory, and whereas Meta’s household of apps is way larger than MySpace ever was, it’s not unfeasible to think about TikTok changing into the highest social app during the close to future.

Meta has already mentioned that it’s making younger customers a spotlight, and as a part of that, it actually must re-establish itself because the chief, not the follower of the newest developments.