Courtesy The Verge
Two months after letting advertisers extend their videos to 60 seconds, Instagram is granting the same privilege to regular users. Instagram videos, which have been limited to 15 seconds since they were introduced in June 2013, can now extend to a full minute. Like its corporate parent, Instagram has been gradually transforming its feed from a stream of static images to a more lucrative collection of videos. In the past six months, the time Instagram users spent watching videos has increased 40 percent, the company says.
Instagram has helped that along by adding public view counts, which spur publishers and advertisers to make more videos. The company also began collecting top videos around special occasions and promoting them at the top of the feed, Snapchat-style. Today’s update for Instagram on iOS will also return a useful tool to creators: the ability to create a video using multiple clips from the camera roll. Dozens of apps had cropped up to stitch your video clips together; you can now do it inside Instagram once again.