Short video apps have become increasingly popular in recent years, providing a platform for users to create and share videos with others. These apps have completely revolutionized the way we communicate, with their ability to quickly and easily create and share videos from anywhere. In this article, we will be looking at the top 5 short video apps available today.

InShoot

In August of this year, Instagram launched its own service for recording short videos. Reels is not a separate platform, but an additional feature of the Instagram app that allows you to record videos, edit them and add visual effects. It came to replace the Facebook Lasso app, which closed this summer: the total number of downloads in the U.S. did not exceed 600,000.

The new service is definitely not threatened by popularity problems: Instagram’s billion-strong audience has happily taken to making short videos with music. However, users cannot yet appreciate all the advantages of Reels: songs cannot be inserted into the videos, because Instagram has not yet licensed musical content. Foreign content with music will also be silent, but users will be able to add third-party sounds to their videos. Another restriction is strictly 15 seconds of timing: minute-long videos cannot be filmed.  

It is obvious that Facebook plans to compete with TikTok: except that the mechanics of the service are almost indistinguishable from the Chinese “original”. Moreover, Facebook started making offers to switch to Reels to popular content makers.

Likee

The smartphone app Likee is used by creative representatives of Generation Z. There are more and more of them: in just three years since its launch, the platform has managed to reach over 150 million monthly users.

Likee is popular thanks to its powerful built-in editor, which includes more than two thousand tools and visual effects. At the same time, the service supports the use of AR-technologies for game interactions with the user. The application conducts many internal activities: from hashtag chelongs to online concerts. This has allowed the service to form an open and sustainable community around itself. Top bloggers don’t forget to encourage it: they hold live broadcasts every day, communicating and having fun with subscribers.

In addition to a suite of effects, editing tools, a growing community, and a cutting-edge support team, Likee offers various bonuses to reward content creators.

Interactivity and proximity to users have borne fruit – Likee took first place in the ranking of “breakthrough apps” according to App Annie for 2019 and continues to evolve.

Byte

The Byte service, which was launched by the founder of the once-popular Vine app. It’s a reimagining of the short video format. If you thought Reels had short videos, you were wrong: Byte videos are no longer than six seconds long. And you can’t add any visual or AR effects to them.

The platform was the first to launch the now-familiar feature of monetizing its creativity – also, it must be said, unusual. Once a quarter, the company hand-selects 100 creators of creative videos, to whom it pays a monthly cash reward from a $250,000 fund. Another thing about the app is that it separates content into multiple genres, allowing users to watch only what they like. But if you need to find a specific video, you can also use the built-in video search.

Such an unconventional approach and the loud name of Dom Hoffman brought impressive results – in the first week the app was downloaded more than 1.3 million times.

Dubsmash

The Dubsmash app, launched in 2014, nearly shut down in 2017, but it has triumphantly relaunched. Dubsmash content consists of dance and lip-sync videos. There’s seemingly nothing special here: no complex editor, no filters, not even monetization. Even the recommendation algorithm is absent: users see the content of their friends and top bloggers. But the service managed to snatch a piece of its audience: at the beginning of the year, it registered 1 billion monthly views. That’s as much as 27% of the US market.

Dubsmash is quite difficult without the basic features of its competitors, but when has the lack of material been a hindrance to real content-makers? For example, it was the app that invented The Renegade dance, which has become popular in many countries.

Triller

The Triller app was originally designed to create custom music videos, but then the service got social features – subscribing to other bloggers and watching their videos. World famous artists love Triller: The Weeknd, Eminem, Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, Marshmello, and drebt stars are registered in it.

However Triller takes not only celebrities: inside the app there is a modern video editor based on artificial intelligence, which allows users to shoot semi-professional music videos. In addition, Triller has contracts with global labels: the platform’s audience gets access to a huge library of tracks, and artists can count on royalties for the use of music.

All these features and TikTok’s precarious position in the U.S. allowed the app to attract about 35 million new users in just a few days, and the total number of downloads reached 250 million.