Instagram, a social network that started out as a photo sharing network and then morphed into what it is today, has decided to expand the time frame for a video. Before today’s announcement, videos could be up to 15 seconds long and it would loop, kind of like a GIF. Shortly after expanding ad video to 60 seconds, Instagram is now expanding all video to 60 seconds long. Which is good because it means you can get more across in that 60 seconds than you would have in just 15 seconds. It should also mean more video content, and thus more interaction with that video content.
In their blog post, the company stated that in the past 6 months, viewership of videos on Instagram have increased nearly 40%. To Instagram, and parent company Facebook, this translates to dollar signs. Facebook had announced in their latest quarterly earnings that they are seeing a huge increase in video viewing on their site, and it’s great to see it translating over to Instagram. This means we’ll likely see more video ads coming to Instagram, which then means more cash for Facebook. Something that their investors and shareholders will love to see.
Along with this update, iOS users are going to get the ability to make longer videos from clips on their phone. This is coming in the latest Instagram update for iOS. There’s no word, currently, on when or if that will be coming to Android. But looking at Instagram’s track record, it appears that this might be iOS exclusive for 6 months or so. It would be nice to see it come to Android, but we may be waiting a good while for it.
Extended video features will be rolling out to Instagram users beginning today and will be available across the platform in the coming months. So it’s a pretty staggered rollout, and many users likely won’t see the update available today. It appears to be a server-side thing, so it won’t involve an update to the Instagram app. After this change, it’ll be interesting to see how video viewership increases for Instagram over the next 6 months or so.