Lasso was the short-video app launched by Facebook in 2018.
Facebook released Lasso on November 9, 2018, for iOS and Android. The standalone app focused on short music videos, lip-syncing, hashtags, and discovering trending clips. It was aimed especially at teenagers and younger users, a group Facebook was struggling to retain on its main platform.
Lasso was widely viewed as Facebook’s answer to TikTok. Users could sign in with Facebook or Instagram credentials and share Lasso videos directly to Facebook Stories. Its launch came shortly after TikTok had become a major short-form video competitor internationally.
The experiment did not last long. Facebook announced in July 2020 that Lasso would shut down on July 10, making the app a short-lived predecessor to the company’s broader short-video push through Instagram Reels. Vine was an earlier short-video service, while TikTok was Lasso’s main competitor—not the name of Facebook’s app.