Social networking service for photo and video sharing Instagram has finally admitted that IGTV, its first major foray into video, was a flop. According to The Verge, the company will rebrand IGTV as ‘Instagram TV’ on Tuesday, and it will also discontinue the exclusive IGTV video format. Videos posted to the main Instagram feed can now be up to 60 minutes long, a length previously reserved for IGTV videos, and users no longer need to leave the app to watch them.
According to an Instagram spokesperson, the IGTV app, now known as the Instagram TV app, will continue to be a “destination for people to visit with the intent of watching the video.” IGTV was launched in June 2018 with the intention of becoming a mobile equivalent to YouTube, providing a space for users to discover and watch longer videos. However, the longer format failed to catch on, and just two months later, an app called TikTok launched in the United States.
Since then, Instagram has refocused its video efforts on competing with TikTok with its short video format Reels, which launched in August 2020, and Instagram has aggressively pushed forward with them, giving them a central spot in the app’s navigation, starting to sell ads, and cross-posting them into Facebook’s News Feed.
According to The Verge, Reels still has one major flaw: it does not provide a consistent way for creators to be paid out, as YouTube and TikTok do. By the end of 2022, Facebook intends to pay $1 billion to creators. Some of that money has gone to Reels creators, but there is no dedicated system for video-makers to be paid, which is always a good way to encourage people to create things on your app.
