At an event in San Francisco, Instagram unveiled its IGTV app, which will allow users to upload videos up to an hour long. The limit for video content until now was set at one minute.
Long-duration videos, which have been uploaded by famous personalities as well as the general public, will be available on an autonomous platform called IGTV, which is accessible from within Instagram and also features a specialized application.
With the venture of long-form videos, Instagram, which is known to belong to Facebook, is ready to compete with popular video content platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram, said at the event that “teenagers may watch less TV, but they definitely watch more videos online” and added: “the time has come for video to move forward and evolve”.
IGTV will not show ads from now on, but Systrom explained that they will try to introduce a way to generate revenue from the platform, to compensate the creators of IGTV videos for their hard work.
An official blog post from Instagram describes IGTV as a TV that can be easily turned on. Users can choose between “For You,” “Following,” “Popular,” and “Continue Watching” to discover videos on the platform. They can also comment on a video and share it with their friends via DM.
The IGTV app will be available for Android and iOS devices next week, announced Instagram.
With this announcement, Facebook's stock rose by 2.3%, making Mark Zuckerberg $ 1.7 billion richer in a day.
