Instagram is extending the length of its videos. Wanting to stick to the TikTok model, the application now offers its users to publish “stories” of one minute against 15 seconds so far. As a reminder, when a user made an ephemeral video of more than 15 seconds, the sequence was thus divided into several “stories” by the application. Not anymore.
“We’re still working on ways to improve the Stories experience,” a spokesperson for Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, told TechCrunch. This new feature aims to facilitate the recording of videos by users, as well as the reading of these by those who watch them. Thus, Instagram users will now be able to post stories that will not be interrupted. Similarly, viewers will no longer have to press continuously to scroll through the content of a long video.
A rapprochement on the model of TikTok
This new update thus blurs a little more the boundaries between stories (ephemeral and accessible by clicking on the profile picture of the account) and the “real” ones which already allow you to publish a 30-second video. The application had started testing this new feature with some users as early as the end of last year. Now all users have access to it.
The strategy of getting closer to the features of its young rival TikTok continues. However, some changes are not to everyone’s taste. Last July, Instagram paused configuration changes that mimicked TikTok, after a campaign from disgruntled users. The boss of the American company, Adam Mosseri had indicated that Instagram was going to stop a test, which displayed photos and videos in full screen, like TikTok.
Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner had called on the application to “go back to Instagram” and “stop trying to be TikTok”, a message at that time widely applauded and relayed by users.
The Californian group Metab had recognized that certain competing platforms were hindering its growth, especially among young users. “People have a lot of choices about how they want to spend their time. And apps like TikTok are growing very quickly, ”said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and boss of Meta, at the start of the year.