by How to recover an old Instagram account
Millions of users have been struggling to upload videos and send messages on Instagram since this evening. More than 2,000 reports have been filed so far since Instagram went down. The hashtag Instagram down is trending on X.
A separate Reels app is said to allow Instagram to better compete with TikTok, which offers more features, better experiences, and benefits short-form video creators. However, it remains to be seen how much users will like this new app.
Reels boss Adam Mosseri told staff this week that it is considering launching a separate app for its short-form video feature, The Information reported. The Meta-owned company is looking to take advantage of TikTok’s uncertain status in the United States, aiming to provide a similar video-scrolling experience, the report added.
Although Meta has not officially confirmed this, it is considered a strategic decision to increase the popularity of Reels and become a direct competitor to TikTok. Uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s operations in the US continues, with concerns raised about data privacy and national security. The Biden administration has argued that TikTok, which has 170 million American users, could be a tool for Chinese espionage and political influence.
A separate Reels app is said to allow Instagram to better compete with TikTok, which offers more features, better experiences, and benefits short-form video creators. However, it remains to be seen how much users will like this new app.
Since the arrival of Reels on Instagram, it has filled the gap that TikTok has. Instagram has over two billion monthly active users worldwide. Some of them come to Insta just to scroll through Reels. According to reports, people around the world spend 17.6 million hours scrolling through Reels every day. Considering the increasing usage, the platform has taken a big step forward. The company is going to launch a separate app for Reels.
In January, Meta also announced a new video-editing app, Edits, which is similar to Capcut, a video-editing app owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. Meta also previously tried a standalone video sharing app called Lasso in 2018 with the aim of competing with TikTok, but that app did not gain much popularity. Thus, the company later shut it down.
Earlier this month, the much-awaited Nothing Phone (3a) series launched two smartphones, the Nothing Phone (3a) and the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, at a starting price of Rs 24,999. Both the smartphones were introduced with UFS 2.2 storage instead of the faster UFS 3.0 or UFS 3.1 storage. After a lot of criticism (and even a lot of trolling) regarding this decision, Nothing has now explained the reason for using UFS 2.2 in these phones. Nothing stated in its community post that the use of UFS 2.2 in the Nothing Phone (3a) is not intended to reduce costs, but also to provide better resources to users.
These benchmarks, shared by the company, show that the Nothing Phone (3a) performs better in certain aspects such as random write and sequential write compared to a phone with UFS 3.1 storage. In the same post, the company also highlighted various software optimization techniques used in Nothing OS to improve gaming performance, file transfer speeds, and multi-tasking capabilities. Nothing has responded to criticism over the inclusion of UFS 2.2 storage by saying that its newly launched smartphone series will ‘work reliably for years’ with OS updates and ongoing optimizations.
