After teasing the feature for months, Instagram has finally officially announced the release of their new brainchild, IGTV. Specifically, the feature that is to come aims to compete with Google’s YouTube as it allows content creators to upload videos that span up to 60 minutes in length. However, as of now Instagram states that videos start playing as soon as you open the app so you don’t need to search to get started, as for how that’s going to work exactly is yet to be revealed. Furthermore, the social media platform insists that IGTV is built for how you naturally use and hold your phone, so videos are full screen and vertical. Although this seems to make sense, many wonder why they haven’t added a landscape option as well, as at the moment many creators opt for a widescreen format to upload their videos. I guess we will have to wait and see how it works out.
As for what there will be to watch, Instagram has reportedly met with many “web celebrities” and encouraged them to produce longer videos that often fall into a vlog-style category. However, it seems like as long as the ability is there, you can expect as many types of videos as you see on YouTube, as long as the portrait-only restriction doesn’t get in the way.
