Riff is Facebook’s latest bet on social video

Today I tried out Riff, Facebook’s newest “side project.” While doing so I spilled my americano.

Riff, a real app launched on April Fools’ Day, lets you pick a topic — like #Duckface — make a video around that topic, and see if your friends want to remix it. In the simplest terms, it’s a video-sharing app for homegrown memes.

Remixing apps aren’t new (remember Canvas?), nor is Riff’s asynchronous conversation style (remember Selfie?), but the app’s still interesting — at least, it’s more interesting than some of Facebook’s past experiments (Poke, Slingshot, Camera, Paper, etc.).

Facebook made it clear when announcing Riff that it doesn’t have wild expectations for the app. Calling it a “side project,” Facebook says Riff was made when “a few Facebook employees stayed after-hours.”

There you have it. The expectations are set. Totally don’t judge this app like it was launched by the world’s largest social network. We’ll try not to.