These days, almost every social media platform is considered as a rival to TikTok, and Facebook is no exception. Facebook has started testing its TikTok clone app Collab, which is Developed by Facebook’s new product experimentation group.
Keep up with me to find out more about this brand new TikTok rival and how it works.
What is Collab, and how does it work?
Facebook’s new ‘Collab’ app is heavily inspired by the popular short video app TikTok. With Collab, users can mix and match original videos and music. The app is in beta and is currently invite-only on iOS.
Collab allows users to record three separate short-form videos of them playing various instruments like drums or guitar or singing vocals. Facebook says users don’t need any experience in music to add their own recordings.
According to NPE product manager Jason Toff—who teased a few clips of the product in action through a series of Twitter posts—Collab connects instrumentalists, vocalists, and other musician-adjacent peeps, letting them sync their sounds together and create their own unique renditions on the pop hits of today.
“Alongside new creators, new curators will arise based on their ability to curate the right combo of clips,” Toff wrote. “The world’s sounds are the new piano keys. The process of curating and remixing— neither of which require any musical training— is so fulfilling.”
When you open the app, you feel like you have entered TikTok, no differences, right down to the curated, “For You.” Only instead of being full of the absolute debauchery of your average TikTok feed, Collab’s clips all mirror the same format: three panels, with three different clips of someone playing an instrument—or singing along—to the beat of a given song.
According to Gizmodo, while there aren’t too many clips just yet (the app’s in beta, after all), the few currently populating the app’s feed are… interesting. The first that greeted me had one-panel housing, a grown man singing an off-key rendition of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September,” while the two panels below showed the exact same guy playing piano and shaking maracas in time to the song.
Folks can “curate” these performances by swapping out each panel for a different piece of vocals or music that someone submitted to the app for this particular song.
