Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the launch of a video editing program called Meta Edits. Currently, the app is being tested by “selected bloggers,” while it is planned to be released to the public in February.
Initially, Edits will only be available on iOS, with an Android version to be released “later”.
“There’s a lot going on, but no matter what happens, our job is to provide the best tools for creators,” Mosseri wrote, subtly hinting at the saga of blocking TikTok and CapCut in particular.
CapCut, which also belongs to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, was one of the most popular video editing apps among creators of short videos—it allowed adjusting clip speed and duration, as well as adding subtitles.
Edits by Meta replicates all the aforementioned features, and also offers a set of unnamed “creative tools,” tabs for finding inspiration and tracking ideas, and allows sharing drafts with friends or co-authors beforehand. On Instagram, users will be able to track the performance of videos created with Edits after publication.
Meta has long and carefully monitored competitors to be able to timely fill market gaps. For example, when TikTok was banned in India in June 2020, Instagram launched Reels just a month later, and when Twitter advertisers boycotted after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the network, Meta released a microblogging platform called Threads.