Instagram Announces IGTV App for Watching Long-Form, Vertical Video

Instagram today unveiled its newest effort, what it calls IGTV. The word "YouTube" never passed his lips, but there's no doubt that Instagram is gunning for it with its new, long-rumored video service, IGTV. This move could significantly increase that amount, making Instagram a destination for watching videos as much as checking up on friends' latest adventures.

Instagram has launched IGTV, a mobile-centric vertical video platform. Some creators are allowed to upload videos for up to an hour.

IGTV is a new app that lets users work long-form video shot vertically on your smartphones. It is especially popular with younger people.

Instagram just effectively declared war on YouTube and Snapchat.

[Photo: courtesy of Instagram] Instagram stars such as Lele Pons, who has 25 million followers and appeared onstage at today's event, will presumably like the opportunity to share longer-form content with their fans.

The initiative comes as parent company Facebook struggles to attract teens, while also dealing with a scandal that exposed its leaky controls for protecting users' personal information.

IGTV will not launch with advertising or make payments to creators, but monetization strategy will be explored in the future, Systrom said. YouTube now boasts 1.8 billion users.

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Instagram has said it now has more than one billion active users, less than a year after it reported reaching the 800 million mark.

The announcement follows news earlier this week that Facebook plans to introduce tools to connect video creators with advertisers and the launch of Facebook Watch for longform video last summer.

Systrom said IGTV is built to be used on a smartphone, and boosts the time for videos from the previous limit of one minute.

Like YouTube, IGTV will focus its spotlight on its brightest stars allowing you to uncover new channels and personas that appeal to your specific interests. "And if we end up in that place, which we think we will, there will obviously be a way for creators to make a living".

Since then it has become a strong engineer of growth for Facebook in terms of users and ad revenues. The company is expected to announce specifics at the VidCon convention, a gathering for online video makers, which begins Thursday in Anaheim, California. "You will never know what you like better unless you try both". By contrast, most YouTube videos fill only a portion of the screen unless the phone is tilted horizontally.

Citing 2017 data from Emarketer, Instagram noted that "these days, people are watching less TV and more digital video".

But Systrom sees it differently.