Facebook’s new Riff app lets friends create collaborative videos
While yesterday was full of both clever and not so clever April Fool’s jokes, Facebook slipped in a real product announcement for a collaborative video app called Riff.
Riff is a video recording and sharing app that takes the short format concept of Vines and adds a collaborative twist. “Our hunch was that if you could make videos collaboratively, the creative process would be more fun and the final product would be cooler,” wrote Facebook product manager Josh Miller.
Facebook has been pushing hard for more video content on its site, rolling out more video ads and reportedly offering YouTube stars incentives to use its service. In a community town hall meeting held last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that within five years he expected Facebook to be “mostly video.”
How it works
After downloading the app, you can log into Riff with your Facebook name and password. Then, you can enter a hashtag category “like #AprilFools” or choose from a list of suggested trending categories.
You can then record up to 20 seconds of video before it is uploaded to the network. From there, your Facebook friends who also have Riff will receive an alert letting them know that you have added a video, giving them the chance to record their own clips to add to yours.
“The potential pool of creative collaborators can grow exponentially from there, so a short video can become an inventive project between circles of friends that you can share to Facebook, or anywhere on the Internet, at any time,” Miller wrote.
Miller says that Facebook will “regularly feature awesome videos to show to people on Riff,” giving the social network a bit of the viral atmosphere it lacks in comparison to sites like Twitter or YouTube.
Riff is the latest app to come out of Facebook’s Creative Labs program, which gives internal teams the chance to create small, unique products outside of the sometimes oppressive umbrella of the core Facebook brand. Other Creative Labs products include Rooms, an anonymous chat program, and Mentions, a celebrity-focused app that allows well-known users to connect with their fan base.
Riff is available now on both iOS and Android.
Image credit: Facebook (c)
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