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.
The app is designed to be a standalone competitor to Musically, which was a hit with teens and even pre-teens before the 60 million monthly user product was
acquired by Chinese tech giant ByteDance for around $1 billion and
rolled into the company’s TikTok app.
“It’s basically
TikTok/Musical .ly. It’s full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny, and focused on creation” one source told me. “A lot of what they’re doing is just trying to be cool and trying to be something that Facebook isn’t.”
Two sources said the music app was codenamed Lasso. However it could be launched under a different name or scrapped, as Facebook does not always release the projects it builds. The app has been in development since at least the middle of the is year. As of August, the app was still in mock-up form. Facebook declined to comment for this report.
The product is being built by members of Facebook’s video and Watch team under leadership from Facebook’s principal lead product designer Brady Voss, a source says.
One of the leaders of the Facebook video music app team is Brady Voss, who built this feature Montage as part of a Facebook hackathon in 2016
