- Meta announced that it's adding new features to its Instagram Reels templates this week.
- New templates will make it easier to make content, but it'll also increase the likelihood that content looks the same.
On Tuesday, $4 that'll simplify using templates and make it easier to reuse elements from other people's reels. The updates are meant to make it easier to "create engaging reels," per the post, but it could have the unintended consequence of making people's feeds monotonous — more repetition and template-based content has turned competitor TikTok's main feed into an unappealing slush of content.
Insider reported in April that Instagram was $4 with a small group of users. Templates lower the bar to create videos, making it easier to make your own content while using an existing format. $4 will make it easier to find trending or saved templates in a new browser, use templates that you see while scrolling, and add text and transitions that were used in the original reel when you use a template.
In essence: it's going to be easier to find and use templates, $4, that's probably going to make things a lot more repetitive when you're scrolling.
TikTok — $4 — has templates as well. Located in the app's video creation center, they allow users to sync photos to music. The platform's $4, however, has made it so easy to make videos for certain trends (like $4) to the extent that people $4
Trending audio, a cornerstone of both TikTok and Reels, is one thing. But templates can make the scrolling experience worse: it's one thing to hear the same sounds over and over again, but seeing the same clips, transitions, or graphics video is, put simply, extraordinarily boring. In its early days, TikTok $4, where people would stage elaborate videos that $4 or $4 That kind of content still exists on TikTok — but amid the churn of low-lift videos, it feels much more difficult to find.
Reels is $4$4 TikTok. But rather than learn from TikTok's mistakes, it seems to only be repeating them.