Facebook is extending the maximum length of its Reels videos, allowing creators more flexibility to do what they do best - be creative.

The move is the latest in a line of changes made by Facebook that will see if try to better compete with emerging photo and video-based social networks. Parent company Meta already increased the length of Instagram Reels, giving them a maximum 90-second length as well.

Facebook Reels were previously limited to just 60 seconds, so this new limit represents a big increase in the amount of time that creators now have to play with. But as Engadget points out, 90 seconds is still a long way short of the 10-minute videos that can be uploaded to TikTok. That's the big competitor for Meta's Facebook and Instagram right now, and it wouldn't surprise many if the 90-second maximum time was increased again in the future.

There are other changes, too. Facebook is going to make it easier for people to create new Reels from their memories while trending templates will allow people to replace clips from a current template with a new one, Engadget notes.

Meta is also of the opinion that Reels is proving popular - so much so that it's the company's fastest-growing format. It's also claimed that Reels plays have more than doubled over the year, while sharing has also gone the same way.

But whether the likes of Facebook and Instagram can truly hope to compete with TikTok is an interesting question at this point. TikTok continues to prove hugely popular and everyone else continues to play catchup, as these changes show. Even YouTube isn't safe. TikTok's testing of landscape videos in December 2022 shows that it isn't ready to stick to the vertical format videos that have been popular to date.