Facebook seems to be once again taking cues from a popular competitor: The social networking giant is building a music video app that’s strikingly similar to TikTok, according to a new Techcrunch report. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lasso, as the project is reportedly being called internally, allows users to record videos of themselves lip syncing and dancing to popular songs, and then share them with other users. The app is being developed by Facebook’s Watch and video team, according to Techcrunch.
Lip sync videos like the ones that Facebook’s Lasso is offering users to make had long been a hit for Musically, a short-form video app that became a hit among teenagers in recent years. Musically was acquired by China’s Bytedance last year, and folded into the company’s TikTok app this August.
At the time, Bytedance said that TikTok had 500 million monthly active users worldwide.
Facebook’s attempts to enter this space are being enabled by the company’s deals with major record labels, which it struck earlier this year. Those deals also allow the company to use major-label recordings for user-generated videos.
This wouldn’t be the first time for Facebook to copy features from competitors to stay relevant with younger audiences. Instagram incorporated Snapchat’s Stories feature a little over two years ago. The feature has proven enormously popular, and is now attracting over 400 million users every day — more than twice the size of Snapchat’s entire user base.