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

Facebook is no longer the cool kid that 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.

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?

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.

Video feed: Advantage TikTok

Both apps feature an endless video feed; scrolling up brings you the next clip. The mechanisms are so similar, it’s impossible to say which one is better.

But TikTok does have something that Lasso doesn’t: a comments section. It’s a curious omission by Lasso, given how popular the feature is on TikTok, where popular videos can attract thousands of comments.

I’m willing to bet that Lasso will eventually introduce comments – but right now, TikTok has the better video feed.

In both apps, videos are grouped by hashtags. #witnessmyfitness, featuring mostly people working out at the gym, has some 9 million views on TikTok. That’s closely followed by #tumbleweedchallenge, where people “roll around like a tumbleweed” while western music plays.

Again, Lasso’s layout is almost identical to TikTok’s — except that TikTok has a search bar, while Lasso doesn’t. One point for TikTok.