Highlights –

  • Meta is planning to expand the support scope of Reels to insights, hashtag search, publishing, mentions, comment moderation, business discovery, and more.
  • The company revealed that this feature alone makes up more than 20% of the time people spend on the app in their Q1 2022 earnings.

Meta announced that it is introducing Reels APIs to several endpoints on Instagram for developers. This announcement was made after it received massive demand for Reels from its developer community. Meta is planning to expand the support scope of Reels to insights, hashtag search, publishing, mentions, comment moderation, business discovery, and more.

The APIs can be used by developers to schedule Reels and achieve social interaction metrics for Reels. The APIs will also enable the developers to publish Reels on Instagram Business accounts. Developers will also be able to delete, hide/unhide, enable/disable, and respond to the comments on the Reels. It will also become easier for developers not just to find public Reels tagged with specific hashtags but identify Instagram Business or Creator reels that have been tagged or mentioned.

The API enhancement can be used by the current and all previous versions of the Instagram Graph API that allows developers to connect their app to Instagram’s features and functionalities. Meta confirmed that Reels would become available for developers with existing access to the applicable APIs. Developers won’t need to put their app through additional App Review as long as their app has been suitably approved in terms of the appropriate permission access levels.

All Reels APIs are now accessible to almost 25% of Instagram user accounts. The APIs will eventually roll out to 100% of users by July 6.

Meta, the tech giant, has for long been betting big on the short-form video features, which pushed the launch of the Reels APIs. The company revealed that this feature alone makes up more than 20% of the time people spend on the app in their Q1 2022 earnings.

Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that in these 18 years, Facebook has seen numerous shifts in the types of media used by people, and this short-form video format is the latest iteration that is snowballing.

While Meta sees an increase in Reels, he also noted that the company sees a significant shift in the advancements of AI recommendations driving more of its feeds for both posts and Reels.

He also explained that feeds are seeing rapid progress – from being exclusively curated by users’ social circles, it’s now being recommended by AI. What propelled the company to focus on improving its recommendation systems was TikTok’s robust recommendation algorithm that helped the app gain popularity. With Meta enhancing its Reels’ recommendation systems, it will get more interaction from people and make Meta a formidable competitor to TikTok.

“Beginning tomorrow, June 28, 2022, we will begin introducing Reels to several endpoints on the Instagram Platform,” the company said in a blog post. “We are always looking to improve our content publishing and consumption experiences, whether people use Instagram natively or via a third party. After consistently hearing from our developer community that Reels is a top priority, we are excited to introduce Reels to a number of the endpoints that you may already be familiar with.”