Facebook's Latest Clone App Is Lasso, A Rival To TikTok
Facebook has no shame when it comes to ripping-off features from the latest social media apps that threaten its dominance, and another example has arrived. The company has just released the app Lasso for iOS and Android, and it's obviously designed to offer the same functionality as TikTok, a video app that's become increasingly popular among teens.
TikTok's claim to fame is allowing users to record short videos set to music, which has spurned the rise of lip-sync clips from today's youth. Facebook's Lasso boasts that it's "easy for anyone to create and share short videos with fun effects," and includes a "massive music library." Along with enabling lip-sync and dance videos set to music like TikTok, Lasso users can also create short, Vine-like clips.
The standard functionality of social media apps is also found in Lasso, including the ability to follow other users, apply hashtags to videos, and search by filter. Users sign-in with either their Facebook or Instagram account, and they must grant access to their profile page, and photos and videos. After creating a Lasso video, it can optionally be shared as a Facebook Story, with similar Instagram stories integration coming in the near future.
It's interesting that Facebook has released Lasso with little to no official announcement, after revealing in October that the app was in development. All we've really seen is a tweet from the app's product manager. While it's likely Facebook was in a hurry to release the app to keep up with the trend of TikTok, there's already plenty of video content to see, suggesting it was available early to a community of creators.