Facebook Chases Snapchats Audience with Riff

riff comboFacebooks Creative Labs has released a new app called Riff that enables friends to post chains of videos, in a clear attempt to tap into the audience that has made video sharing apps Vine, Snapchat and Meerkat so popular.

The app enables users to record up to 20 seconds of video and share it with their friends, who can then add their own recordings afterwards, creating a conversation, a collaborative project or a record of an event from several different perspectives.

The app, which is available for free on iOS and Android, was apparently inspired by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge trend from last year, which prompted Josh Miller, product manager at Facebook, and other employees to begin work on the app.

Currently, Riff videos have to be shot in-app, and there are no editing tools included like those that are available in Instagram, Vine and other apps. Videos are only shared among friends of the creator or collaborators, ensuring the content spreads virally through acquaintances rather than instantly being available globally, and users cannot like or comment on videos, with the aim of inspiring people to contribute their own content instead.

“Our hunch was that if you could make videos collaboratively, the creative process would be more fun and the final product would be cooler,” said Miller. “Once a friend adds a clip to your video, your friends friends will also be shown the video in Riff and will be able to add to it.

“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.”