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How Facebook’s new short video app Lasso compares to TikTok

Social network copies viral short video app to win back teens -- but will it work?

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How Facebook’s new short video app Lasso compares to TikTok
Karen Chiu
This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Facebook is no longer the cool kid it used to be. In recent years, American teens have been turning in droves to the likes of Instagram and Snapchat. Lately though, the social network is facing yet another burgeoning threat -- this one coming all the way from China.

TikTok, a runaway success from Chinese startup ByteDance, is sort of like Instagram... but for short video. Lasting less than 60 seconds, the videos often feature teens showing off dance moves, doing comedy skits, and performing various difficult (but somewhat meaningless) stunts.

After merging with its Western equivalent Musical.ly in August, TikTok has quickly risen up the download charts. Since the beginning of last week, it’s beaten Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook in both the iOS App Store and Google Play, according to figures from App Annie.
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This month, Facebook struck back, quietly launching its own clone called Lasso. It seems to be a test version, only available in the US for now.

So does Facebook’s new competitor stack up to TikTok?

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We tried it a couple of times after it came out, but over the last 24 hours it failed to load any videos for us. An update on the iOS App Store says Lasso is currently fixing crashes from the previous release. The following impressions are based on our experiences before that.

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