Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team last week announced a new iOS app called ‘Collab’, designed for collaborative creation of music videos. The app is an invite-only beta now.
The app allows collaboration of three different videos, which can be played in sync. Its major competitor, TikTok, allows up to two videos to be synced on its platform. Collab users can create videos using their own recordings or by “swiping and discovering” other videos on the platform to complete their composition.
All the videos are initially posted on the Collab feed and can be shared on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. Facebook is still fine-tuning the music-making app to enhance the user experience. “In light of so many folks sheltered in place around the world, we’ve expedited this release,” says Facebook.
The Collab app invites are being done in batches, starting with the U.S. and Canada. To request access, people can sign up for the waitlist at https://npe.fb.com/collab .
In comparison, TikTok, which remains one of the favourite platforms for video sharing, offers a wide range of content to choose from when creating a music video, and also has features like react and duet that serve a similar purpose.
TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet company, already has over 2 billion downloads globally on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to analytics platform Sensor Tower in blog post on April 29.
Another TikTok-inspired video sharing app, Mitron has surpassed 50 lakh downloads on Play Store in a very short period. It is available on Play Store since April 2020. The app developer’s privacy policy page states that Mitron TV Private Limted is a company registered in Bengaluru.
Qboxus, a Pakistani software development company claims to have sold the source code used in the Mitron app. Qboxus developed the source code of its TicTic app, a TikTok clone, and then made it available for developers to purchase.
The Mitron app has a rating of 4.2 stars with over 3 lakh reviews, while TikTok has a rating of 4.4 stars with over 2 crore reviews, on the Play Store, as on June 2, 2020.
TikTok faced a rating fiasco recently with its ratings on Play Store falling as low as 1.2, but moving up to 4.4 after Google’s intervention. TechCrunch reported a Google spokesperson as saying the company removed millions of negative reviews. TikTok received bad reviews recently due to certain content published on the platform. The app had over 2.8 crore reviews when it had a rating of 1.2 stars. Google removed lakhs of reviews to bring the app ratings up.
The Hindu had earlier reported that the ‘Remove China Apps’ app had surpassed 10 lakh downloads on Play Store amid the India-China border tension. As a result, the demand for other apps offering TikTok-like features could go up.
