Facebook Begins To Get Abandoned By Users, Meta Immediately Launches Reels Globally

JAKARTA - After appearing on Instagram for a long time, now it's Facebook's turn to launch the Reels short video feature globally. Meta as a parent company strives to expand the fastest growing content formats.

It comes after an earnings report earlier this month that Facebook's overall user count fell. The social media giant has allegedly lost a third of its market value.

It's no wonder, then, that Reels is now a top priority for attracting younger users. The focus on Reels comes as many users flock to rival platforms like TikTok.

Internal research from Meta, leaked by former employee and reporter Frances Haugen, shows young users have declined since 2012 with only users aged 25 and over remaining.

At this launch, Reels is already available in the United States (US) and in English-speaking countries first, but will now be expanded to a total of 150 countries and featured more prominently on the Facebook and Instagram apps.

The short video format will also offer more editing and sharing features, including allowing users to re-mix other people's videos to add their own comments.

As quoted from The Guardian, Wednesday, February 23, Meta launched Reels on Instagram in 2020 and on Facebook in 2021 in response to the hugely popular short video app market TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.

"Reels is already our fastest-growing content format by far, and today we're making it available to everyone on Facebook globally," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

The company, which says video feeds now account for half of the time people spend on Facebook, also announced a new way for content creators to make money through Reels.

Meta is known to be expanding its program to pay creator content bonuses to more countries and is testing overlay ads using banners, as well as stickers to generate ad revenue. It will soon launch full-screen ads between reels.

Lastly, Meta also says it will roll out an update for users to create and view Facebook Reels in new places, such as in the Stories feature, the Watch tab, and at the top of Feeds. In some countries, users will also see suggested Reels in their feeds.