It seems like Facebook has not given up its dream of winning back teenagers to its fold. Well, at least not in the main Facebook app. The social media giant has very quietly released a new app called Lasso and it’s trying to appeal to the younger generation that decided they were too cool for Facebook. It’s being pitted as a competitor to the TikTok app and will let you create and share short-form videos similar to how Vine was before its eventual demise.
Lasso describes itself as an app that “makes it easy for anyone to create and share short videos with fun filters and effects.” Using the in-app camera, you will be able to shoot and then edit everything with its “high-quality video editing tools” and of course all the filters and stickers and text overlays that you will need to be able to make your video look cool enough for the kids.
TikTok recently merged with musical.ly and is quite popular with all the lip-sync videos with a dash of creativity out there. Lasso also wants to compete with that, leveraging on its extensive music library, especially since Facebook inked deals with a lot of the major record labels out there. But Facebook also wants to go beyond just lip-sync videos, encouraging its users to create comedy to fitness to beauty-related videos.
To create an account, you can sign in through Facebook or Instagram but you have to grant the usual permissions. Then you can scroll through all the videos already on the platform (they must have beta tested it with selected users since there is a lot of content already there). Hashtags are a big part of discoverability in this platform so even if you don’t know anyone there yet, you can just filter content with the tags.
When you’ve started creating videos, you can also share it on your Facebook Stories. Well, if you’re on Facebook. Let’s see if they are able to convert TikTok users into Lasso users or if it’s just the “oldies” who will still use their new app. You can download Lasso for free from the Google Play Store.
