Instagram unveils new video service in challenge to YouTube

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Facebook Inc-owned social network Instagram launched a mobile app on Wednesday dedicated to user-generated videos up to an hour long, intensifying the competition for consumers’ time among ad-supported streaming services such as YouTube.

Called IGTV in a nod to traditional television, the service plans to feature videos from rising Internet celebrities, artists and pets, some of whom have tens of millions of social media followers.

It will increase Instagram’s video time limit from one minute to 10 minutes for most users. Accounts with large audiences will be able to go as long as an hour.

“Teens are now watching 40 percent less TV than they did five years ago,” Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said at an event to announce the launch in San Francisco. “It’s time for video to move forward and evolve.”

Instagram, which was founded in 2010 as a photo-sharing app, has surpassed one billion users, Systrom said.

According to the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of US kids ranging from 13 to 17 years old use Instagram, second to YouTube at 85 percent. Only 51 percent of people in that group now use Facebook, down from 71 percent from a similar Pew survey in 2014-15.

Founded in 2010, Instagram has surpassed one billion users. /VCG Photo

Tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and Snap Inc’s Snapchat have been spending heavily to grow mobile video services that will attract both users and corporate brand advertising, and longer clips are more conducive for video ads lasting from 30 seconds to one minute.

Courting stars to post videos is part of their strategies. Instagram said it has signed up personalities such as Lele Pons, who has 25 million Instagram followers, for IGTV.

Pons said she did not plan to choose sides between two of Silicon Valley’s largest companies. “I’m still going to be posting on YouTube as well as on Instagram,” she told reporters.

Facebook on Tuesday launched a separate effort to lure video makers away from YouTube, offering ways to make money on the Facebook app. YouTube said it plans to update its commercialization options this week.

Instagram does not immediately plan to share revenue with video creators but may in the future, Systrom said.

IGTV will be available as part of Instagram’s app and as a separate app, he said.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom. /VCG Photo

The service does not have advertising at launch, but research firm eMarketer said it expects it will have ads eventually, and that marketers in the meantime will sign up stars for endorsement deals.

As social media “influencers” have gained popularity, “I only wonder why it took Instagram so long to roll this out,” eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said.

Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012 for one billion US dollars, has grown by adding features like messaging and short videos. In 2016, it added the ability to post slideshows that disappear in 24 hours, a copy of Snapchat’s popular “stories” feature.

(Top image: Reuters Photo)

Source(s): AP ,Reuters