Instagram will allow its users to create stories that will be broken into fewer parts. TechCrunch confirmed last Friday that uploading stories up to a minute long will now show up as a full video. This feature has been tested since the end of last year on a select audience and is now available to everyone.
Meta made an official statement in which it mentioned that company considers that it important to make Stories user-friendly. And a whole video is perceived better by the audience, so 15-second breaks will no longer apply for Stories up to a minute long. This update is very long-awaited, because it is not only more comfortable to watch videos, but it is also much more convenient to scroll through uninteresting ones, where you need to click on each block while scrolling through it.
Of course, there are fans of small stories who will not like the update. Also, this innovation blurs the line between Stories and video clips. However, this is a step towards the future, because the course of Instagram is increasingly directed towards video, which affects more and more opportunities for posting video content.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, mentioned in his overview of the company's top priorities for 2022 that video is now the main focus. Therefore, the ongoing changes were expected to take place. This course is partly due to competition with TikTok, partly due to the changing interests of users. And although the new strategy of Instagram cannot be called unambiguously successful, many have found their response from the audience, which means that Meta did not fail with the new strategy.
Which Stories format do you prefer: short or long? Do you think the focus on video content will bring success to Instagram? Please share your thoughts below.