Instagram may have started out as a photo-sharing app, but it’s been trafficking in videos for over 5 years now with great success. The company’s next step is to break into videos full-time with its very own standalone app, IGTV.
IGTV is available both as an app and a tab in the main Instagram application. The brand’s looking to try something different with the platform by focusing on vertical videos. This helps set it apart from rivals like YouTube, but it can be considered a bit limiting as well.
IGTV vs YouTube
After all, vertical videos are fine for smartphones, but YouTube is indisputably at an advantage when it comes to standard horizontal content on computers. That’s not Instagram’s target market though, so perhaps this is not an issue for it at the moment.
Instagram itself claims that mobile video will account for 78% of mobile data traffic by 2021. Younger audiences are apparently spending more time watching amateur content creators in place of professionals. IGTV may pay off in the long-term as a result, but it’s too early to tell whether Instagram’s 1 billion-strong user base will flock to the new app.
IGTV has a few nifty tricks up its sleeve to grab audience attention. First of all, it’ll start playing videos as soon as a person opens the app, just like a TV. No searching or browsing is required and swiping brings up new content. Instagram’s also curating the feed so videos by creators people already follow will show up.
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Instagram also promises that anyone can be a creator on IGTV. Select folks will get to upload hour-long videos at first, before the feature is rolled out to everyone. The limit for others is 10 minutes at the moment. The app isn’t showing ads right now, but the company will gradually introduce them in the future.
You can download IGTV via the Play Store and App Store.
