Video-collaboration apps have been tried and tried by the likes of Krowds, MixBit, Vyclone, and others, but none of them has yet taken off the way single-author video app Vine and the recently released Twitter Periscope have. But Facebook's new free Riff app has the backing of the world's largest social network and its considerable design, development, and promotional resources. Is that enough to buck the trend of failed collaborative social video apps? Let's find out.

Starting Up

Riff is a small 8MB download from the iTunes App Store, but video apps tend to eat up storage with use—see Vine. The app requires iOS 8 or later, and is (oddly) optimized for the iPhone 5. You must log in with Facebook and allow access to your camera and microphone, and optionally notifications, but the last isn't a requirement. You kind of want to be notified when someone adds to your Riff video compilation, though.

Start Riffing

The Riff interface goes for a fun, cheerful, simple look that seems designed to appeal to a youthful audience with lots of colorful smilies splashed around. What you won't see is any of Facebook's trademark white-and-blue here. On the app's main page are curated Featured Riffs and Riffs created by your Facebook friends at the top. Each has a big plus-sign button. Tap it, and you can add your own clip to the Riff.

But what sets Riff apart from video apps like Instagram is that each Riff isn't a finished project, but an ongoing conversation between the video's originator and all of their Facebook friends. After you post a Riff, all your Riff-using Facebook friends will see it in the app and be able to add their own videos to your Riff. If the folks at Riff decide your video is popular and exciting enough to be Featured, it will be visible to anyone with the app, so be aware that your video might find a bigger audience than you intended.

While testing Riff in the mist-shrouded isle of Manhattan, Michael and Max shot videos of their lunches back and forth from across the neighborhood. We found that videos uploaded quickly, and that it was easy to keep a moving-picture conversation going.

Riff uses your Facebook friends as a trusted network, and it prevents anyone else from adding videos to your Riff. But, as most of us know, not all of us are really friendly with our Facebook friends. That racist uncle of yours could easily add something embarrassing to your Riff. Thankfully, an overflow menu pulls up a nicely designed menu that lets you delete or report individual clips in a given Riff. You can use that last reporting tool (which cleverly looks like a policeman's whistle) on any Riff video clip.

In the top right corner, a simple, clear "Start new video" bar makes it purpose obvious. First you see a group of text tags (such as Bro? #myfood, pets) that you can use to describe your Riff, or you can use a text-entry box to enter a custom topic for your video compilation. Once that's chosen, you get a 3-second countdown before your phone starts recording. Note that Riff defaults to the front-facing "selfie" camera, but you can flip it during the countdown. We also noticed a slight, but annoying, delay between when the app said it was recording and when recording actually began.

Video clips can be up to 20 seconds in length (more generous than Vine's 6 seconds or Instagram's 15 seconds), but you can stop any time after 3 seconds. Hit the red X button to restart if something wasn't right.

Once you're finished, you can either start over or add your video to Riff. You can simultaneously share your Riff to your Facebook timeline, where it has a large square, Vine-like appearance. Your viewers can tap an HD button, full-screen the video, or even download it.

Back in the Riff app proper, you can share a Riff video to any iPhone app that accepts video—Messages, Mail, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and so on. This merely sends out a link a Web-based player which, while pleasantly large, gives the viewer few options—you can't even pause or mute. You can, however, see how many video clips the Riff includes and how many times it's been viewed (something that took Vine about a year to include). If you share your Riff to Facebook, it will be embedded directly into your timeline for all to see. Notably, while Riffs appear as Flash objects on desktop computers, they play just fine in the Facebook iPhone app.

Nothing to It!

And that's about it. We said Riff was a simple app, didn't we? No filters, no editing or trimming, just simple collaborative video shooting and sharing. The app's developers have plenty of time to add those and other features—a good technique for keeping the buzz up for your app—as Instagram and Vine do. Without much effort at all, we were able to collaborate on some (mildly) amusing video creations. If we could do so without much thought, surely those brilliant Viners who take great pains to stage amusing entertainment, could make the app and its social congregation sing.

Just as Vine and Periscope have leveraged Twitter's predominance to spread easy video and livestreaming, Riff could do the same for Facebook. The app is far more interesting (and fun) than Facebook's bizarre Rooms or the abysmal Slingshot. But like most of these Facebook spin-off apps, Riff lacks the polish of the social network's official app or its Messenger app. While Riff is very easy and surprisingly fun, we think it would benefit from a design more consistent with Facebook's other apps.