It is curious to see how the latest idea of Facebook to compete against other platforms such as TikTok is an application for a very specific audience. BARS is the name of this new app that, as a social network, wants to be the place where rap lovers find their place . Will it be Facebook’s new strategy to target niches individually?
BARS, the Facebook app focused on rap and similar to TikTok
Facebook has a new weapon with which to try to steal users from the platform that has been taking away from them for many months: TikTok. Although we could really say that the ByteDance platform is the great enemy of any current social network. What they have achieved based on short videos with challenges, dances, the Duos format, Lip Sync and many other things is simply amazing.
Well, the new application with social touches for Facebook is BARS. Could we say that it is yet another social network? Well, possibly yes, although since its inception it has a very well-defined target audience: rappers and lovers of rap music in general.
BARS, like TikTok, offers a fairly similar interface through which users can record videos in portrait format with a duration of 60 seconds . But that would not be very striking if we were not to say that the tools included are designed so that they can compose their own raps.
That is, in BARS you will find a collection of rhythms, vocal effects and even audio filters so that the final composition has the most attractive finish possible that allows, of course, a device as versatile as a smartphone that is not without limitations compared to other professional tools.
Of course, if something always attracted TikTok, it was the challenges, so in BARS there will also be a kind of challenges through which users will see 8 words with which they will have to assemble their lyrics. This is like the battles that, perhaps, you have witnessed or heard if you like this musical genre.
In addition, here you also have the possibility to tell the application if you are an experienced rapper, with some fluency in this rhyming or a true newbie wanting to become Eminen. In this way, depending on your level, you will have some extra help that the platform will offer you.
Will BARS manage to be a benchmark or will it end up in oblivion?
Facebook’s proposal with BARS is still curious and striking, especially since it is a very niche mini social network with which they could partly help grow their main platforms such as Facebook itself or Instagram.
At the moment we cannot assess the impact much because it is in the testing phase and only for US users . What’s more, within that group, the only ones who can start testing it will be those with iOS. Which is still curious seeing the current relationship that Facebook and Apple have lately. Although in the US the market for users with iOS instead of Android is quite important and that makes sense of this decision.
Likewise, now the question is whether it will be a benchmark or will end up in oblivion. If it is now TikTok that copies the idea, then it is clear that it will have nothing to do.