Instagram is expanding beyond short clips with a broader video strategy designed to make the platform a destination for social entertainment on both phones and televisions. The company is developing episodic Reels, TV-focused viewing features and tools that connect short-form discovery with longer videos, while challenging YouTube’s dominance on the big screen.
“We believe that entertainment and creativity aren’t limited to a three-minute video,” Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product, told WIRED. She said the company wants to overhaul Instagram video and create “the best place for social entertainment.” As more people watch longer videos on televisions, social media platforms may increasingly resemble streaming services.
Reels expands into episodic content
Instagram is also expanding creator tools for turning Reels into series. The feature, called “Series,” is already available to some creators in the app and is being tested for television viewing.
“We want to be able to say, ‘Reese loved Episode 3,’ so as soon as Episode 4 comes out, we have to make sure Reese sees it,” Lyons said.
Instagram is focusing on the experience of watching videos on a TV. The company is exploring ways to make television viewing more social, such as showing what people are watching through tabs featuring their connections. It also plans to turn smartphones into remote controls for TVs.
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Learning from IGTV
Lyons believes the video-focused update avoids one of the core mistakes of IGTV, Instagram’s previous attempt to support broader content. Many viewers struggled with the format and tried to rotate their screens. IGTV failed to connect with users in part because it allowed only vertical videos. Meta discontinued the app a few years after its release in 2018.
Instagram’s latest changes build on its existing strength as a clips platform while challenging YouTube’s dominance on television. Short clips of two people speaking behind a podcast microphone have become ubiquitous across social media, and many creators use them to increase visibility. WIRED’s own podcast now also records video for use in social-media clips.
Connecting clips with full episodes
Instagram is attempting to streamline the path from discovering a viral clip to becoming a fan of longer content. Instead of viral clips and full-length videos existing on separate platforms, the company is positioning Instagram as a unified experience: a viewer might encounter Myrick’s medical rant in the morning, open Instagram on a TV later that night and be prompted to watch a full podcast episode.
“What we’re seeing now is that a lot of great short-form content is vertical, and a lot of great long-form content is horizontal. We have the design challenge of finding a way to make all of this work together in one product,” Lyons said. “TV will be the best place to watch long-form horizontal content, and mobile will be the best place to discover that content.”
Source: www.wired.com
