In brief: Facebook has a secret plan to clone TikTok

Facebook is working on a new app that it hopes could win back the attention of teens while capitalizing on its recently-attained major label music licenses. Facebook is building a standalone product where users can record and share videos of themselves lip syncing or dancing to popular songs, according to information from current and former Facebook employees.

Source: TechCrunch

From TechCrunch’s scoop, Facebook’s secret project – code named Lasso – sounds a lot like Tik Tok, the viral video app that’s popular among teens, exploding to 500 million users each month in the span of just two years.

Tik Tok is the work of Chinese media startup Bytedance, which calls the app Douyin in its native China. After the company acquired Musical.ly, the app was merged with Tik Tok.

Tik Tok is bigger right now than Instagram across much of Asia, according to Android app store rankings.

Facebook has previously cloned many features from Snapchat to enliven Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook itself as Mark Zuckerberg’s social network struggles to retain younger users.