Hour-Long Videos Coming To Instagram — Instagram Launches IGTV

Now, Instagram is bull-charging into YouTube’s turf with IGTV, a bundled app for longer-form videos. This will probably be hashed out once it’s clearer just how much IGTV will be making. It’s now unclear if the videos will be monetiseable through adverts, but creators will no doubt be working on sponsored IGTV content deals. A recent Pew study found the number of teens who used Instagram was nearly as high as those who used YouTube (72 and 85 percent, respectively).

From our CEO @kevin: “Today, we have two big announcements to share”. Just days later, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately billion.

Mr Systrom said: “Since our launch in 2010, we’ve watched with amazement as the community has flourished and grown”.

Both apps are available for download now in the App Store and Google Play.

Called IGTV, the platform will be a standalone app and also accessible inside the existing Instagram app, in a place separate from users’ main feed. These tabs contain other recommended videos that are sorted in a number of different ways (‘For You”, “Following”, “Popular’, etc.) and you can swap between channels by touching any of the videos that you see on the screen. The difference between Instagram and IGTV, however, is that the latter pushes vertical videos only and can last up to an hour. Will people want to watch videos up to an hour long vertically? The IGTV app starts playing as soon as you open the application.

Instagram shared some stats on its website promoting the IGTV that mobile video content will make up for 80 percent of the total mobile data traffic in the next three years. YouTube has launched YouTube Premium, a paid streaming-subscription service, and YouTube TV, a skinny bundle of live-streaming broadcast and cable channels. Rather, it is clearly aimed at high-quality creators with huge followings-people like Kim Kardashian, who is already using IGTV actively. Anyone can upload IGTV videos from the app or the web to start their own channel. Either way, the face of Instagram is officially changing, with long-form video officially part of the newly-upgraded app. We’ll let you know when the Android app shows up. To make this possible, Instagram is taking the support of a standalone app, IGTV, which will be accessible from the Instagram app. Facebook itself has tried to do the same thing and largely failed, but could Instagram fare better with IGTV and its existing crowd of Insta-celebs?

Business-wise, the move makes flawless sense. This means that you will not have to search for a video to get started.

Instagram also announced Wednesday that it hit 1 billion monthly users.

A whole platform built around vertical video and access to the most annoying of Instagram’s Stars?