In a rather low key fashion, Facebook has released an app called Lasso that lets users create fun, short videos similar to TikTok. Lasso is Facebook’s latest bid to attract the younger generation users who are slowly shifting to other platforms. For those who don’t know about TikTok, it is a viral 15-second video app that recently merged with Musical.ly.
Now coming to the new app itself, Lasso users can record themselves dancing and lip-syncing to music, similar to what they can already do on TikTok. It’s available on iOS and Android. “Lasso is a new standalone app for short-form, entertaining videos — from comedy to beauty to fitness and more. We’re excited about the potential here, and we’ll be gathering feedback from people and creators”, the report quoted Facebook.
As expected one can sign in to Lasso Facebook based or related applications like Instagram or create an account using Facebook. In terms of sharing, users are able to share Lasso videos as Facebook stories, with the feature to share them as Instagram stories to come later.
However, it is odd how discreet Facebook has been about Lasso’s launch, with no official statement on its website. The only semi-official confirmation came via Twitter where Facebook product manager Andy Huang announced the app’s release, and later Bowen Pan, the product manager for Lasso specifically, tweeted about it.
According to the latest report by Verge, in 2018, only half of teens say they still use Facebook, compared to in 2014, when 71 percent of them said they did. So Facebook has been trying to diversify its offering to keep the younger audience hooked on to its platforms.
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