Instagram: IGTV is discontinued

Instagram is undergoing a transformation. Now IGTV is being discontinued. However, videos will not disappear from the platform – quite the opposite. The change to a moving image platform is to progress with a unified video format.

IGTV was not a success

The feature introduced in 2018 made longer videos viewable on Instagram. In a separate section, users could access longer video content that was repeatedly interrupted by ads. By all accounts, however, this TV feature did not bring the desired success; rather, it was overshadowed by short videos and photo posts. Now Facebook has decided to shut down the feature.

In its place will be a unified video feature, which will be called Instagram Video. This function will bring IGTV and short videos into a unified framework. In the future, only videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds will be available. Instagram is thus following the path paved by TikTok; appropriately, the Instagram CEO already said in the summer that Instagram is no longer a platform on which photos are shared. The move towards moving images, which is now being pursued with a unified concept, is likely to be driven to a large extent by the success of the trailblazer and the financial potential of the sector that this has revealed. In 2020, TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app.

Problematic content and concepts

The recently louder criticism of Instagram and parent company Facebook is by no means likely to die down in light of this development: A whistleblower had published information proving that Facebook, despite clear knowledge of the facts, denied that its services – including Instagram – were having a negative impact on users’ mental health. It had also become known in the course of this that Facebook was even expanding functions that were considered critical out of financial interest, even though the damaging effects had long been known to the company.

The path now taken toward an even stronger attention economy with short videos in the foreground represents a continuation of the criticized course. The development of a children’s version of Instagram, on the other hand, has been paused. However, a complete turn away from this project is not to be expected: Adam Mosserie, Instagram CEO, described the project as “right and important”.