Heads up, Netflix and Disney: Instagram wants a piece of YouTube‘s TV watch time, too.
“We’ve been hearing for a long time that people love to watch Reels together in their living rooms with their friends, so we’ve been working on a TV version of Reels,” Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s VP of Product, said in an announcement video alongside chief Adam Mosseri. “And we know to do that well, we need more than just short-form video.”
As a result of this insight, Instagram is testing a creatively named new feature, Features, that will let creators populate its platform with horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Instagram hopes Features will appeal to long-form content creators, podcasters, and comedians. It has already tested Features with some long-form creators in Brazil and plans to expand to “tens of thousands of creators” in the U.S. over the coming months.
Creators using Features will also get access to a tool YouTubers (and anyone else who’s been clued in to the clipping scene) will find familiar: Clips as Reels, which lets creators excerpt short segments from their Features videos and post them as standalone shorts on Instagram’s TikTok copycat.
The clipped Reels will automatically link out to the long-form video from which they were taken.
“What you’re now going to be able to do is, you see a clip of a podcast that you love, you can just click and continue watching or watch the full video, and you’ll be able to dive in and see the whole thing because creators are going to be able to link these Reels to their overall feature,” Lyons said.
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