Periscope and Meerkat left a long-term impact on the social media market by creating a new style of app: temporarily hosted live-streaming video apps. While numbers for both apps are slowly rising, users are showing an interest in video-streaming apps. Now Facebook is trying to get into this market with its own variation on the video-streaming app.
Facebook announced its video app Riff on Wednesday (and it wasn't an April Fool's joke). Facebook product manager Josh Miller described the product as "a creative tool to make videos with friends." The app allows users to make a video, then post a keyword or phrase alongside it. Friends are then encouraged to watch the video and to add to the video if they desire. "Once a friend adds a clip to your video, your friend's friends will also be shown the video in Riff and will be able to add to it. The potential pool of creative collaborators can grow exponentially from there, so a short video can become an inventive project between circles of friends that you can share to Facebook, or anywhere on the internet, at any time," writes Miller.
While this app is in many ways a response to the popularity of Periscope and Meerkat, it's also another opportunity for Facebook to promote itself as a video-hosting service. A recent study from Social Bakers showed that Facebook's algorithm is putting more emphasis on video, and that Facebook videos currently outnumber YouTube videos posted to Facebook.
"The app began as a side project by Facebook Creative Labs, which also made Mentions, Facebook Groups, Slingshot and Paper. Not all have been hits. Some projects such as Slingshot, an instant messaging app for photos and videos, have failed to get traction with users," Forbes reports.
Facebook has not released any details about future plans regarding the app's monetization.
The Riff app is available worldwide in 15 different languages, including Spanish, French, Thai and Polish.
