“Instagram creators will now able to give their followers a one-minute preview of their IGTV videos via the main app’s feed”
Instagram users would now able to watch previews of IGTV videos by creators they follow on their feeds. This move by the Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing app is being taken as a means to promote long-form videos on the platform, which has traditionally limited itself to short, 1-minute videos. Till now, creators on Instagram were allowed to add IGTV previews to only their Stories.
Instagram had launched IGTV last year in June. It is available as a tab inside the main Instagram app as well as a standalone app. Videos on IGTV can be longer than 10 minutes, while the Instagram app caps the video run-time at 60 seconds for most people and pages.
Now, you can preview IGTV videos in your feed. When there’s a new video from someone you follow, you can tap from your feed to watch the full video in IGTV. (👋 @HannahStocking) pic.twitter.com/tkYSchB7E8
— Instagram (@instagram) February 7, 2019
Now, with this new feature, creators could now able to share a one-minute preview of their video on the profile and followers can tap on the previews in their main feeds to watch the full story on IGTV, a cross-promotion to boost the latter. An Instagram representative said, “With IGTV previews in Feed, we’re making it even easier to discover and watch the latest video content from your favourite follows.”
After logging in on IGTV, the app automatically starts to play videos from the people who are in the ‘following’ list. Moreover, it gives personalised recommendations from elsewhere on Instagram. However, since its debut, the app has received criticism regarding its recommendations. Last September, Business Insider had outlined that the app had routinely recommended improper videos to young users. But it seems Facebook’s efforts at long-form videos to compete with YouTube and Snapchat are far from over.
