IS INSTAGRAM'S LATEST FEATURE WORTH IT OR NOT?

Instagram reportedly launched a new feature, which comes in the form of longer videos, which will allow users to post videos up to 60 minutes long.

According to online reports, the new platform will be called IGTV and will focus itself on web celebrities whose editing style is a little less polished than that of traditional publishers like YouTube vloggers and TV studios.

Techcrunch reported that the company met online content creators over the past week to encourage them to shoot 10-minutes videos that will set the style and standard for the hub. A screenshot of the uploader for the new long-form video feature shows Instagram will allow clips between 15 seconds and 60 minutes and, according to the user who uploaded the image, allows file size up to 3.6GB.

IGTV videos will also include link-out options which will allow creators to drive traffic to their own websites and stories. Details on how this will be monetised still need to be confirmed, but it is clear that this sort of platform would be a direct competitor to sites like YouTube.

However, if something works for a competitor, Facebook is going to continue to copy it into their own platforms. And, in this case with Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, YouTube is kicking its ass by providing something Instagram cannot: long-form video.

But just because Facebook can swipe a feature, doesn't mean it should. Shoving 10 minute videos (to start) into a vertical format seems to be a solid example of a feature addition that needed to hit the "no" pile. It just doesn't fit well with Instagram's aesthetics.

For Instagram, the challenges aren't in delivering the long-form video features, it is in attracting the same sort of creators teens are leaving the platform to watch on YouTube. And if you expect YouTube's most popular creators to jump to a format that doubles their workload without cutting them in on the ad revenue, well, it seems like a stretch.