Facebook launches Riff app; build a video series with friends

Facebook has been churning out quite a few apps over the last year, and some have been more successful than others, but this latest effort seems pretty well tailored to their audience.

Riff is a video-recording app that lets you post videos up to 20 seconds long. Thus far, that sounds like any number of other services, but the unique spin that Riff puts on things is that you first choose or create a hashtag, statement or theme for your video, and then once the video is posted, others can add on to it with their own video keeping with your original concept.

Here’s a peek at how it works:

When you hit the button to start a new video, you just have a 3-2-1 countdown and then you are recording; there’s no editing at the moment, so that certainly limits things to some degree. You do get a chance to approve the video before it goes up or is added to the existing chain, though, so don’t panic.

When you post the video, your friends are notified and they can watch and add on to it, and then in turn their friends will be able to watch or add on to it. If you start the video, you do have ultimate control over it and can delete clips as you see fit.

Obviously we’ve seen plenty of memes that would have no doubt made use of this app if it were available at the time. From planking to Harlem Shake to ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, they all had one core concept or pattern that all of the subsequent videos were following on.

Do you see Riff catching on or does Facebook have another dud on its hands?

source: androidandme