6 ms·

Instagram announces IGTV

48 points by prawn 8y ago

naeemak01 8y ago
yes i read 20th june an amazing feature introduce by instagram. IGtv Views , Will give tough time to YouTube . https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv-views/ https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv-views/ look like many website now helping to increasing views
buraksarica 8y ago
Will i ever understand the logic behind giving user one minute videos first, and then building IGTV years later?
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Take your pick: - Difficulty - Market Research that suggested otherwise - Lack of market penetration versus competitors Launching a 1 minute video platform is much easier than building a live streaming platform, and maybe it wasn't the right time for them to launch a live recording platform or would have hurt some of their other ambitions?
- danpalmer 8y ago
  The abilities of a feature complement its positioning to users. I would imagine that the limited 1 minute videos are in the main Instagram app, where they would likely want to retain the feel of Instagram, which wouldn't work well with long form content. Now IGTV might be their play for long form content. Sure, both are video, and both are from Instagram, but two very different ways of positioning video, for different purposes, in different places, targeting different people.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Chicken and egg: short videos can still be kind of bearable when amateurishly produced, the length limitation serves as guiderails. Now that much of the content consumed on Instagram is thoroughly professional, they can open the limit. Did anyone else notice how the announcement doesn't include a single line about how users would create those longer videos?
Jaruzel 8y ago
I wonder if the backend of IGTV is the same as the one that powers Facebook inline video content? Either the same technology, or the same infrastructure... I also can't shift the feeling that IGTV is designed to pull 'influencers' away from YouTube.
- soziawa 8y ago
  At this point Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are just different front-ends to the same services behind it. They all use Facebook servers and technology.
  - nindalf 8y ago
    Do you work at Facebook?
    - soziawa 8y ago
      No, you can tell by the design and the servers they use.
- whywhywhywhy 8y ago
  I wonder if it’s less having to pull them and more providing the raft so they can jump. Youtubers rarely have good things to say about the platform anymore.
  - soziawa 8y ago
    YouTubers talk even more shit about Facebook. You can find basically every semi popular YouTube video on Facebook. Some even have more views on Facebook than they do on YouTube. Instagram will have the same problem very soon and will turn just as shitty as YouTube.
lazharichir 8y ago
It's nice-looking but feels more like an extended Instagram Stories than an actual YouTube competitor.
- dotdi 8y ago
  I was wondering what features will exactly make it the proper YouTube competitor, and I had the same feeling about it being more or less extended stories. On the other hand, YouTube seems to be set on making every other platform more attractive at the moment, so let's see how it plays out.
- wastedhours 8y ago
  Yep - discovery still looks to be hit and miss, that's the key for a YT competitor, not just the length of video.
  - soziawa 8y ago
    Discovery on YouTube sucks so much they might as well not have it.
    - cobookman 8y ago
      Why do you say that. I've found it to have great recommendations.
      - detaro 8y ago
        It's recommendations aren't bad per se once it's gotten to know you, but at least for me it doesn't provide much in the way of discovery of new content: it's mostly digging up related material from the archives of people I already follow or are aware of, or short clips/compilations.
      - soziawa 8y ago
        I'm mainly interested in computer science, engineering and professional race driving. What I get recommended are videos about the second world war and car crash compilations. Every three to four months a video that is actually interesting shows up. And the recommendations when watching a video is even worse. I'm watching video about voting systems and all the recommendations are car crash compilations. I must have been sorted into a very stupid pool of viewers.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
> "...it’s built for how you actually use your phone, so videos are full screen and vertical." Oh dear.
- dewey 8y ago
  I don't understand why vertical video always gets this response, mostly from people who do anything with film. I get it, it's not the most cinematic experience but who actually wants to hold their phone sideways while scrolling through a feed, or switch apps etc? It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way. Also as most video is even filmed in portrait mode.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    Vertical video is awful because it doesn't capture any of the surroundings of the subject, and instead wastes those pixels it on filming what's above & below the subject (which 99% of the time is irrelevant).
    - whywhywhywhy 8y ago
      For traditional media yes, but for influencers it fits their face and the product just fine and landscape is actually a waste. A sad reality.
      - Rjevski 8y ago
        Depends what those "influencers" are about. A lot of successful Youtube influencers actually show off something else besides their face and for those the mandatory vertical video wouldn't cut it.
  - genericacct 8y ago
    Compatibility with an installed base of several billion televisions, for starters. Periscope handles this like a champ imho, even their recorded .ts streams encode orientation switching so that it works flawlessly either way and you can switch midstream.
SmallDeadGuy 8y ago
I'm excited because I follow a lot of video content creators on instagram, having to switch to youtube or twitch.tv to actually watch their content. If I can get all of their pictures/text announcements and video content in one place I will be very happy. Though as a separate app, it doesn't sound like it'll be integrated as nicely with instagram as I'd hope for. EDIT: I missed that it can be watched from within the instagram app too, this is almost perfect! I just need landscape video support so I'm not watching streamers play in vertical mode and I can finally stop using youtube.
- soziawa 8y ago
  Why would you want to give even more power to Facebook? It's bad enough that they were allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. At least online video should belong to a different company.
  - dmos62 8y ago
    To look at it optimistically, or maybe naively, ever increasing centralization will increase our incentive to devise decentralized alternatives and generally decrease our tolerance for such colossal clusters of power. Facebook and the like are already profanely large and important. That could be the only reason to give more power to Facebooks of the world – to quicken their downfall. A sort-of test of this theory is the current US administration. During the election, some anti-establishment and left activists called for Trump to be elected. They felt like society didn't want to be fixed, or was beyond fixing. Dishearted, they decided that the faster this unsustainable state of affairs reaches its climax the better. Enter Trump. There's a noteworthy counteracting force though. As, the documentary maker, Adam Curtis argues in HyperNormalisation, for the last few decades, the principal objective of our ruling class is to maintain stability and reduce risk. Risk, as a word, has actually been bizzarely relevant during this time. Look at how its use in the Google Books corpus shoots up starting in the seventies [0]. Of course, virtually any ruling class always opposed power redistribution, but what Curtis is trying to demonstrate is that our current establishment has become extremely adept at it, in part thanks to the advent of computing and internet. An interesting area of focus for socioeconomic studies is how specifically stability of power distribution is maintained, in this day, and how those mechanisms could be compromised. [0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=risk&year_start=1800&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=risk&year_star...
thisisit 8y ago
So, the race to squeeze out "influencers" for all their ad worth has started? First Youtube rolls out a Sponsor button to try and stop people from those going to Patreon. Then it tries to force people to monetize their videos even if the creator doesn't want to. Now Instagram wants people to stay on their platform and not re-direct people to other video sites.
oooooof 8y ago
What is it? Intended to compete with YouTube?
- billysielu 8y ago
  I think it sounds more like IRL on Twitch TV.
maciejgryka 8y ago
I've recently read a report about how media optimized for addictiveness impacts children's development [0] and found this sentence from the IGTV announcement particularly jarring: "Just like turning on the TV, IGTV starts playing as soon as you open the app". [0] https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted-Childhood.pdf https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted-Childh...
- leethargo 8y ago
  Thanks for the reference! Already shared with my parents who are quite worried about my phone-obsessed teenage sibling.
jug 8y ago
I can't imagine this will be very well used. It's obviously a reaction to influencers and monetizing on ad revenue from them but I have to wonder how many will install two different Instagram apps... (The influencer will also be on the main one.) And I am surprised this couldn't be efficiently integrated to the main app. Is it about branding? I mean... They just increased the clip length. Couldn't those clips be shown prominently for/on the user in the main app? I'm getting stuck on the issue of two different apps because I think that's where the most friction will be.
- girvo 8y ago
  Wait, didn’t the article explicitly mention that it’s also in the main app, or did I misread? “While there’s a stand-alone IGTV app, you’ll also be able to watch from within the Instagram app so the entire community of one billion can use it from the very start.”
  - jug 8y ago
    Ooh I must have missed that when I saw this yesterday. I directly went to the App Store and saw the new IGTV app and just assumed it was a new separate product although with their existing user base.
IshKebab 8y ago
Wow those app icons are terrible.

48 points by prawn 8y ago

yes i read 20th june an amazing feature introduce by instagram. IGtv Views , Will give tough time to YouTube . https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv-views/ https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv-views/ look like many website now helping to increasing views

buraksarica 8y ago

Will i ever understand the logic behind giving user one minute videos first, and then building IGTV years later?

hardwaresofton 8y ago
Take your pick: - Difficulty - Market Research that suggested otherwise - Lack of market penetration versus competitors Launching a 1 minute video platform is much easier than building a live streaming platform, and maybe it wasn't the right time for them to launch a live recording platform or would have hurt some of their other ambitions?
danpalmer 8y ago
The abilities of a feature complement its positioning to users. I would imagine that the limited 1 minute videos are in the main Instagram app, where they would likely want to retain the feel of Instagram, which wouldn't work well with long form content. Now IGTV might be their play for long form content. Sure, both are video, and both are from Instagram, but two very different ways of positioning video, for different purposes, in different places, targeting different people.
usrusr 8y ago
Chicken and egg: short videos can still be kind of bearable when amateurishly produced, the length limitation serves as guiderails. Now that much of the content consumed on Instagram is thoroughly professional, they can open the limit. Did anyone else notice how the announcement doesn't include a single line about how users would create those longer videos?

Jaruzel 8y ago

I wonder if the backend of IGTV is the same as the one that powers Facebook inline video content? Either the same technology, or the same infrastructure... I also can't shift the feeling that IGTV is designed to pull 'influencers' away from YouTube.

soziawa 8y ago
At this point Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are just different front-ends to the same services behind it. They all use Facebook servers and technology.
- nindalf 8y ago
  Do you work at Facebook?
  - soziawa 8y ago
    No, you can tell by the design and the servers they use.
whywhywhywhy 8y ago
I wonder if it’s less having to pull them and more providing the raft so they can jump. Youtubers rarely have good things to say about the platform anymore.
- soziawa 8y ago
  YouTubers talk even more shit about Facebook. You can find basically every semi popular YouTube video on Facebook. Some even have more views on Facebook than they do on YouTube. Instagram will have the same problem very soon and will turn just as shitty as YouTube.

lazharichir 8y ago

It's nice-looking but feels more like an extended Instagram Stories than an actual YouTube competitor.

dotdi 8y ago
I was wondering what features will exactly make it the proper YouTube competitor, and I had the same feeling about it being more or less extended stories. On the other hand, YouTube seems to be set on making every other platform more attractive at the moment, so let's see how it plays out.
wastedhours 8y ago
Yep - discovery still looks to be hit and miss, that's the key for a YT competitor, not just the length of video.
- soziawa 8y ago
  Discovery on YouTube sucks so much they might as well not have it.
  - cobookman 8y ago
    Why do you say that. I've found it to have great recommendations.
    - detaro 8y ago
      It's recommendations aren't bad per se once it's gotten to know you, but at least for me it doesn't provide much in the way of discovery of new content: it's mostly digging up related material from the archives of people I already follow or are aware of, or short clips/compilations.
    - soziawa 8y ago
      I'm mainly interested in computer science, engineering and professional race driving. What I get recommended are videos about the second world war and car crash compilations. Every three to four months a video that is actually interesting shows up. And the recommendations when watching a video is even worse. I'm watching video about voting systems and all the recommendations are car crash compilations. I must have been sorted into a very stupid pool of viewers.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

> "...it’s built for how you actually use your phone, so videos are full screen and vertical." Oh dear.

dewey 8y ago
I don't understand why vertical video always gets this response, mostly from people who do anything with film. I get it, it's not the most cinematic experience but who actually wants to hold their phone sideways while scrolling through a feed, or switch apps etc? It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way. Also as most video is even filmed in portrait mode.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Vertical video is awful because it doesn't capture any of the surroundings of the subject, and instead wastes those pixels it on filming what's above & below the subject (which 99% of the time is irrelevant).
  - whywhywhywhy 8y ago
    For traditional media yes, but for influencers it fits their face and the product just fine and landscape is actually a waste. A sad reality.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      Depends what those "influencers" are about. A lot of successful Youtube influencers actually show off something else besides their face and for those the mandatory vertical video wouldn't cut it.
- genericacct 8y ago
  Compatibility with an installed base of several billion televisions, for starters. Periscope handles this like a champ imho, even their recorded .ts streams encode orientation switching so that it works flawlessly either way and you can switch midstream.

SmallDeadGuy 8y ago

I'm excited because I follow a lot of video content creators on instagram, having to switch to youtube or twitch.tv to actually watch their content. If I can get all of their pictures/text announcements and video content in one place I will be very happy. Though as a separate app, it doesn't sound like it'll be integrated as nicely with instagram as I'd hope for. EDIT: I missed that it can be watched from within the instagram app too, this is almost perfect! I just need landscape video support so I'm not watching streamers play in vertical mode and I can finally stop using youtube.

soziawa 8y ago
Why would you want to give even more power to Facebook? It's bad enough that they were allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. At least online video should belong to a different company.
- dmos62 8y ago
  To look at it optimistically, or maybe naively, ever increasing centralization will increase our incentive to devise decentralized alternatives and generally decrease our tolerance for such colossal clusters of power. Facebook and the like are already profanely large and important. That could be the only reason to give more power to Facebooks of the world – to quicken their downfall. A sort-of test of this theory is the current US administration. During the election, some anti-establishment and left activists called for Trump to be elected. They felt like society didn't want to be fixed, or was beyond fixing. Dishearted, they decided that the faster this unsustainable state of affairs reaches its climax the better. Enter Trump. There's a noteworthy counteracting force though. As, the documentary maker, Adam Curtis argues in HyperNormalisation, for the last few decades, the principal objective of our ruling class is to maintain stability and reduce risk. Risk, as a word, has actually been bizzarely relevant during this time. Look at how its use in the Google Books corpus shoots up starting in the seventies [0]. Of course, virtually any ruling class always opposed power redistribution, but what Curtis is trying to demonstrate is that our current establishment has become extremely adept at it, in part thanks to the advent of computing and internet. An interesting area of focus for socioeconomic studies is how specifically stability of power distribution is maintained, in this day, and how those mechanisms could be compromised. [0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=risk&year_start=1800&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=risk&year_star...

thisisit 8y ago

So, the race to squeeze out "influencers" for all their ad worth has started? First Youtube rolls out a Sponsor button to try and stop people from those going to Patreon. Then it tries to force people to monetize their videos even if the creator doesn't want to. Now Instagram wants people to stay on their platform and not re-direct people to other video sites.

oooooof 8y ago

What is it? Intended to compete with YouTube?

billysielu 8y ago
I think it sounds more like IRL on Twitch TV.

maciejgryka 8y ago

I've recently read a report about how media optimized for addictiveness impacts children's development [0] and found this sentence from the IGTV announcement particularly jarring: "Just like turning on the TV, IGTV starts playing as soon as you open the app". [0] https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted-Childhood.pdf https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted-Childh...

leethargo 8y ago
Thanks for the reference! Already shared with my parents who are quite worried about my phone-obsessed teenage sibling.

jug 8y ago

I can't imagine this will be very well used. It's obviously a reaction to influencers and monetizing on ad revenue from them but I have to wonder how many will install two different Instagram apps... (The influencer will also be on the main one.) And I am surprised this couldn't be efficiently integrated to the main app. Is it about branding? I mean... They just increased the clip length. Couldn't those clips be shown prominently for/on the user in the main app? I'm getting stuck on the issue of two different apps because I think that's where the most friction will be.

girvo 8y ago
Wait, didn’t the article explicitly mention that it’s also in the main app, or did I misread? “While there’s a stand-alone IGTV app, you’ll also be able to watch from within the Instagram app so the entire community of one billion can use it from the very start.”
- jug 8y ago
  Ooh I must have missed that when I saw this yesterday. I directly went to the App Store and saw the new IGTV app and just assumed it was a new separate product although with their existing user base.

IshKebab 8y ago

Wow those app icons are terrible.