Amid TikTok’s turmoil in the U.S. over the weekend, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a forthcoming video editing app called Edits that, well, looks a lot like CapCut.
CapCut is developed by ByteDance, which also makes TikTok. That meant CapCut also went dark in the U.S. over the weekend as part of the tumultuous TikTok ban. But while TikTok came back online, CapCut remains unavailable in the U.S.
Instagram Edits is currently available for pre-order on the App Store with an expected March 13th release. In a post on Instagram, Mosseri describes it as “more than a video editing app.”
“There will be a dedicated tab for inspiration, another for keeping track of early ideas, a much higher-quality camera (which I used to record this video), all the editing tools you’d expect, the ability to share drafts with friends and other creators, and — if you decide to share your videos on Instagram — powerful insights into how those videos perform,” Mosseri wrote.
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The App Store listing offers some additional details about what Edits will be capable of. It mentions the ability to export videos with no watermark for sharing to “any platform,” capturing clips up to 10 minutes long and easy sharing to Instagram. The listing also highlights several editing tools, most of which sound like you’d expect. There’s support for back grounds via green screen or a video overlay, “AI animation,” filters, fonts, stickers, audio tools and caption features.
And, as Mosseri mentioned, Edits will offer performance insights for people who use it to share to Instagram, such as tracking how Reels perform with a live insights dashboard, seeing engagement details and more.
Screenshots of Instagram’s Edits on the App Store.
The timing of Instagram’s Edits announcement, combined with the app’s similarity to CapCut, sparked criticism of Meta for copying CapCut. And those criticisms aren’t entirely without merit, especially with Meta’s history of buying competing social media platforms or, when acquisitions aren’t an option, copying the most popular features on its own platforms (for example, the Stories feature from Snapchat).
However, Mosseri refuted the copycat allegations in a post on Threads, Instagram’s Twitter/X clone. In it, Mosseri claimed that Instagram has been working on Edits “for months” and said it will end up “pretty different than CapCut.”
“Edits will have a much broader range of creative tools and probably a smaller addressable audience. Think a place to track all your ideas instead of templates. Think AI video editing tools on a per clip or per video basis. Think new insights on why your videos are succeeding or struggling,” Mosseri wrote.
View on Threads
We’ll have to wait until March to see just how similar Edits is to CapCut. And March is a long way off — a lot can happen between now and then. Given how tumultuous the last few days have been for ByteDance and its properties, who knows where we’ll stand in March. There might not even be a CapCut around for Meta to copy.
Source: Instagram Via: The Verge
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