Facebook Launches Riff, a Collaborative Video Making App for Android and iOS

Facebook Creative Labs on Wednesday launched a free app called Riff, which also happened to be April Fools' Day. The app can be used to make videos with friends.

Users can shoot up to 20 seconds of video using Riff and add tags like "Make a funny face" or "April Fools" to let others know what kind of videos they can add to the original 20-second video. Once the creator's friends add videos, it can be viewed by their friends' friends who can also then add their 20-second videos, thus converting a small video in to a large project. The videos can be shared on Facebook and on the Web. Popular Riff videos will be showcased on the apps home page as well.

"The potential pool of creative collaborators can grow exponentially from there, so a short video can become an inventive project between circles of friends that you can share to Facebook, or anywhere on the internet, at any time," says Facebook Product Manager, Josh Miller. A demo video made by the firm can be viewed here.

The Riff app by Facebook only shows a 3-2-1 countdown before users can shoot a video. Unfortunately, the app does not support video uploads from the device for now. Also, there is no 'like' or 'comments' feature in the app, nor any editing features. Users can also fast-forward through a clip in case they don't find it interesting.

The original creators of the videos can also moderate threads and can delete clips they don't like in the app. Anyone on Riff can report any specific clip or the whole video as offensive. The app is available for both Android and iOS platforms via Google Play and App Store in 15 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Polish. While the app weighs 4.2MB for Android and is compatible with devices running Android 4.3 and later versions, it weighs 8MB for iOS and is compatible with devices running iOS 8.0 and later versions.

Whether Riff will gain enough traction or not, time will tell. However, looking at the history of Facebook Creative Labs apps like Slingshot, Paper, Mentions, Rooms and Groups, Riff might too fail as another standalone app by the social media giant.