TV times for Instagram
Photo-sharing social network’s new video offering is simple and solves problems when watching content online, writes JUSTIN CONNOLLY
IT ALL started, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom says, with “square photos and filters. Those were the good old days, right?”
He’s on stage in San Francisco, revealing to the world the latest addition to the social network’s features, which have grown in number and complexity since it was first introduced eight years ago.
He’s here to bid us welcome to IGTV – yes, this is all about video.
IGTV is both a new feature for the platform and a new standalone app.
All the features of IGTV are available in the Instagram app we all know and love, so you’d only need the standalone app if you want to avoid the myriad distractions offered by the rest of Instagram
At the event to launch IGTV, Systrom outlined the company’s reasons for building IGTV, and it all seemed pretty compelling.
Young people, he said, are watching 40% less TV than they were five years ago, but are watching 60% more video on Instagram than they did just 12 months ago. Things are obviously changing.
Instagram sees a few problems with the way video is presented online (and I’m pretty sure Systrom was talking about YouTube).
First, it’s usually presented in landscape – a legacy of TV screens – even though we watch most of our video these days on phones (which we hold upright, obviously).
Second, it’s hard to find the things you want to watch – even if you search for something, you are often presented with a complex list of results that you have to scroll through to find what you want.
Thirdly, on Instagram at least, you can post only short clips of 60 seconds or less.
IGTV tackles all these problems. The video is always presented in portrait mode, so no turning your phone around, the interface is so simple even I can understand it, and there is a limit of a whole hour on video lengths.
When you launch the feature, either by launching the app or clicking the IGTV icon in the menu bar in Instagram itself, you are presented with the first video, which begins playing immediately, in the For You section – a selection of videos IGTV thinks you might be interested in based on your activity in the app.
The other sections are Following (all IGTV videos from people you are following in the main app), Popular (IGTV videos with lots of likes and views), and Continue Watching (which gathers all videos you started watching but didn’t finish in one place).
You can swipe down to get rid of these sections, which reveals the video in all its glory with a few controls that allow you to pause and scrub the video, like or comment on it, send it to others, or click on the avatar of the person who posted it so you can see more of their work (and follow them if you like what you see). These controls disappear with a tap or after a few seconds.
That is literally it. It’s very simple and intuitive to navigate. Certainly compared to YouTube.
If you want to upload your own videos, you have to create a IGTV channel, and remember (this is just about the only confusing bit) that posting a video to either your Instagram feed or your Story will not post it to IGTV, too – they are three different things.
It’s an interesting direction for Instagram to take, although perhaps an inevitable one given the way the tech wind is still blowing very firmly in video’s direction.
What Instagram has done differently to Facebook is that it is not forcing it on anyone – by making IGTV a separate section, and even giving it its own app, Instagram’s makers have just about managed to keep it out of the way of those who don’t want it, and make it easy to access for those who do.
It all seems a long way from Instagram’s “square photos and filters” beginnings – we now have all kinds of video on offer, story sections, live broadcasting, messaging, and now IGTV.
Instagram is a very different beast to the simple app that launched eight years ago.
Its makers have been careful to try to retain that core simplicity despite adding features, and have so far been pretty successful.
That they felt the need to bust IGTV out into its own app suggests they, at least, feel they’ve gone far enough.
Some Instagram users will feel “the good old days” are well and truly behind us with the introduction of IGTV, but in the game of social networks, you either grow, or you die.