Background
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, has a dream, avision that makes business sense for the media juggernaut company as well asfor a user of his products.
His dream is to unify all his users into a single unifiedapp.
His portfolio includes Facebook, WhatsApp, WhatsAppBusiness, and Instagram. All of these platforms are world-changers and asessential as electricity for many individuals and businesses all over the world.
Free as in beer, but how?
The contemporary world is one of decreasing attention spanand increasing corporate influence.
Before we say anything, it must be appreciated that nothingis free in this world. I repeat, there are no free lunches.
But, any individual or company can access highly advancedsoftware (like Facebook, Gmail and the other services available on the internet)which costs its company a huge sum of money to operate, maintain, and upgrade.
So, why is it free for me? Because, these companies selltheir ability to insidiously modify behaviour of its users to anyone who iswilling to pay them cash.
For explanation and proof of the same, kindly see The SocialDilemma documentary on Netflix.
A word about shortvideos
When the modification of a user’s behaviour is being sold tothe highest bidder in this attention-based economy, then it is natural that thesame keeps on decreasing.
Thus, the trend towards videos with smaller and smallerduration is the fallout.
To appease, humour, entertain, and basically trap a personwith hits of dopamine, the companies had to adapt and short videos become highlypursued merchandise.
TikTok is an app that has created millionaires off of 60-secondvideos.
YouTube has been forced to experiment with a feature calledShorts, limiting the video to 60 seconds and promoting the same on a standaloneshelf on a user’s YouTube Home page in the app.
A step towards the dream
Now, to go with the flow of (in the views of this author) degradationof humanity, a flow which companies like Facebook helped create, now the shortvideos created on Instagram are being tested to be shown on the same user’sFacebook News Feed.
Make in India?
An interesting aspect of this testing is that it is beingtested on Indian users. Also, the same has not been enabled for all users but aselect few.
A Facebook spokeswoman told Reuters, “In India, we’retesting the ability for Instagram creators to choose to have their Reelsrecommended on Facebook... creators can reach new audiences and people cancreate and discover more entertaining content.”
TikTok clone?
Experts have opined that the feature will compete withTikTok head-on with the Instagram Reel having the functionality to add specialeffects and soundtracks.
Final words
When this functionality is tested and if the company decidesto roll-out the feature all over the world, then all users will be able to recommendtheir 30-second long videos (called Reels) on Facebook.