Meta, X and Bluesky seek to replace TikTok with new features aimed at editing and viewing vertical videos

Meta, United by the entry into force of a law that stipulates its suspension in this country.

TikTok paused its activity this Sunday, for a few hours, in the United States, although it has already resumed it after the announcement of the moratorium by the president-elect, Donald Trump, who will take office this Monday. However, other ByteDance applications, such as Lemon8 and CapCut, remain paralyzed in this country.

In this situation of uncertainty, competing technology companies, such as Meta, China.

Meta has introduced a new vertical video editing app for mobile devices called Edits, which offers several creative tools and an interface very similar to CapCut, an ‘app’ from the ByteDance developer intended for the same purpose.

The technology company led by Mark Zuckerberg has announced that this model is aimed at “passionate about making videos with their phone” and that it provides “the best possible tools for creators” of content, in the words of the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri.

The manager has shared a video on his personal profile in which he has indicated that Edits “is more than a video editing application” and that it will have a tab designed to inspire users, another to continue developing early ideas as eraser and a third to access the camera and record “high quality” videos.

Video clips can be up to 10 minutes long and can be edited frame by frame. Likewise, it allows you to activate camera settings to indicate the resolution, flash, dynamic range or zoom, among other characteristics.

You can also include different text fonts, sound and voice effects, video filters and stickers, as well as create subtitles and improve audio quality so that voices are clearer and background noise is eliminated.

Edits will also give users the ability to share content left in the draft with other friends and creators and the option to bring these videos to Instagram, in 1080p and without a watermark. In that case, the ‘app’ also will show information about your performance live and will provide a breakdown of interactions with the video by followers and non-followers.

This application is already listed in the App Store and will also arrive “soon” on Android, but it will not be available for download until next month. In the meantime, Meta will make it available to some users so they can test it and share their feedback, in order to improve the user experience in the final version.

These have not been the only changes introduced by Meta on its platforms, since Instagram has undergone a restructuring and has announced the ability to upload ‘reels’ of up to three minutes in length. “Historically we have only allowed reels of up to 90 seconds, given our focus on short videos, but we have heard feedback that it is too short for those looking to share longer stories,” Mosseri said.

Instagram has also started to look more like TikTok by changing the square grid of profiles to a rectangular layout and also adding a tab in the Reels feed that shows videos that other followers have liked. or have added a note. This option will be extended from the United States to different countries “soon.”

X, for its part, has joined this consumption format and has become “a new immersive home” for vertical videos, with a new dedicated tab in its mobile application, which has the same structure as the ‘apps’ contrary and is now available in the United States.

Bluesky It has also verticalized its video viewing experience and has launched a new personalized ‘feed’ for content in this format, which can be viewed by ‘scrolling’ on the screen. The platform has also indicated that these custom reels can be configured to only show videos, an action that runs through a timeline.

To create personalized ‘feeds’, the social network has independent tools, such as Graze.social and Skyfeed.app, which are already working to add support to these video lists.

Likewise, those responsible for Bluesky are also creating alternative video applications to TikTok with the decentralized AT protocol, as is the case of Tik.Blue, Skylight.Social and Bluescreen.Blue. At the moment, they are in their early stages of development and are available to some beta testers.