Race is on to take TikTok’s vacant short-video crown

Bengaluru: Last week’s ban on TikTok has opened up the short videos market to a stream of internet players, including social media giant Facebook, content aggregator Dailyhunt, homegrown ecommerce company Flipkart, as well as streaming services like Gaana and Zee5.

These companies are looking to capitalise on unprecedented user demand as the Chinese ByteDance-owned TikTok vacates a niche segment that it dominated with some 200 million monthly active users.

On Wednesday, Facebook-owned photo sharing platform Instagram announced a ‘broad’ pilot of its TikTok-like short video feature Reels in India, the fourth market where it is being carried out after Brazil, Germany and France.