While Facebook has been under fire for copying competitors for years now, the criticism has never stopped the company. From making its own Tinder to jacking the idea of Snapchat’s Stories, the Zuck never shies away from taking “inspiration” from other successful tech companies.
Case in point, Facebook’s newest app, Bars.
Bars allows users to write and record their own raps using professional beats. The app offers different audio and visual effects and can even suggest rhymes while you write, according to TechCrunch. The videos can be up to 60 seconds long and you can save them on your camera roll to share elsewhere — sound familiar?
While Bars is focused on rap, it’s already being compared to TikTok. In addition to the short, music-based video format, the interface is apparently similar to TikTok’s as well. It has a two-tab newsfeed (Featured and New instead of Following and For You), and the engagement buttons are placed in the lower-right. A user’s handle is on the lower-left.
Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team made Bars; the team has also created several other apps so far, such as Tuned, a messaging app for couples, which launched in April 2020.
Some NPE-created apps are retired, such as the Pinterest-like Hobbi. It’s yet to be seen how Bars will fare. Considering the success of some of Facebook’s other copycats, however, we shouldn’t rule it out yet.