Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Television Social Networks Youtube

Instagram Chases YouTube With a Push For Longer, Widescreen Videos (theverge.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the longform-is-back dept.
Instagram is testing a new longform, horizontal video format called "Features" as it pushes further into YouTube territory and expands its presence on TVs. The Verge reports: Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has been against doing longform video on the platform "for a long time," he says in a six-and-a-half-minute video (here's the widescreen version) with VP of product Tessa Lyons, saying that "one of my concerns has been, how do we make sure that we keep Instagram not just about entertainment, but about connecting with friends." If you watch a longform video, "it's a lot of Reels, photos, and carousels that you might not have sent to a friend," meaning less likes and shares. Now, though, the team is working on making shortform and longform video "symbiotic," according to Mosseri, like podcasts or comedy specials that can be both long videos and broken up into shorter ones.

The announcement of this widescreen video push also follows the launch of Instagram's TV app late last year. That app launched first as a Reels-focused experience and as a pilot for Amazon Fire TV devices in the US, but it's since expanded to Google TVs, Samsung TVs and Apple TV, and Instagram launched new features like the ability to watch Stories earlier this year.

Instagram Chases YouTube With a Push For Longer, Widescreen Videos More | Reply

Instagram Chases YouTube With a Push For Longer, Widescreen Videos

Comments Filter:

  • .... how Gen Z and general idiots dont seem to have figured out that if you turn your phone by 90 degrees then it records in landscape mode. Theres a reason TV and film are recorded that way - that's how we see the world. Our eyes are side by side, not above and below.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      .... how Gen Z and general idiots dont seem to have figured out that if you turn your phone by 90 degrees then it records in landscape mode. Theres a reason TV and film are recorded that way - that's how we see the world. Our eyes are side by side, not above and below.

      Have you walked around with your phone in your hand? Your phone is most likely in portrait orientation while you do this as it lets you operate it single-handedly. If you watch people, they're doing stuff on their phones, including watching vi

      • Who walks along watching videos ffs? You sit down or stand still to do it and - guess what? You can turn the phone 90 degs! Easy! Well, unless you have hands the size of a pre schoolers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Whell when you film you might think off actually focus on filmimg, and mabt yoo handed is a good way of doing that. Ofc if it's a 5 second clip of "fail of the day" or some such it hardly maters but anything beouns 3-5 minutes is just close to unwatchable in portrait mode

    • Now... if you upload a video in landscape on Instagram, does it convert it to portrait?
      (Never used Instagram)

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Except you can't. Turn your phone 90 degrees and post the result on Instagram, you'll notice that if the video was correctly aspect ratio adjusted it is now played back incorrectly.

      Before criticising a generation as "idiots" it pays to understand the platform they are posting to, because god knows you would clearly fail at it. At least until Instagram finishes rolling out this feature.

      Hint: no GenZ is producing content for your fat arse to watch on the computer screen. They are producing it for phones, whil

      • You've heard of youtube right?

        • You mean the service that promotes vertical content short format video which people record vertically, and if you attempt to rotate your phone it renders so small you can't even see what's going on?

          I've not just heard of it, it forms the core part of my point.

          • Odd how millions of videos on youtube are in HD landscape recorded on phones then. Perhaps those people have a clue unlike you and your gen z friends.

            • Odd how millions of videos on youtube are in HD landscape recorded on phones then. Perhaps those people have a clue unlike you and your gen z friends.

              Nothing odd about it. It's a different format for a different purpose. Next time you see a GenZer on the train holding their phone vertically, go take a peak at what they are watching. If it's YouTube I guarantee you they'll be watching shorts. If it's Facebook or Instagram it'll be a reel, or if it's TikTok it'll be ... Tiktok. Correct format for correct purpose.

              I get it, you're a boomer. But please get yourself a lawn and a walking stick to shake and stay in your lane. Leave the kids and their modern form

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Viol8 ( 599362 )

                Not everyone critical of stupid actions is a boomer including myself. Only a moron records a video in portrait mode.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        So Instagram is broken, got it.
    • Portrait modes are for portraits - of yourself - you know there is this thing called a selfie. Most people record videos of themselves or other people when on a phone; as such the width of landscape ratio is wasted space. But then so is a selfie :D

      As for your comment about landscape is how we see the world.. Not so for newer generations they only see themselves so portrait makes perfect sense.
    • Maybe there are or should be options for phones to record horizontally by default and/or trim the sides instead of reducing the image size when displaying vertically.

  • How about fixing photos first? (Score:3)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:39PM (#66394598) Homepage Journal

    How about letting people post photos on the web without ratio restrictions? Maybe start there first.

    • Depends on what site you go to, but that's always been an option.
      The big question is: would you really wanna post anything online, considering AI is just gonna vacuum it up as training data?

    • Instagram is not a photo sharing site. Restricting the aspect ratio has been a "feature" from the beginning.

    • There oughta be a law against the variant of pillarbox presentation with blurred and dimmed portions of the portrait video at the margins. Who thought this up, and why?

  • Instagram has a "presence on TVs"? That's what the word expand means, that there is something there in the first place. Has anyone seen Instagram on a TV?

  • ..since that's the year that Kevin Systrom (Original CEO/Founder), Mike Krieger (Original Founder) left.

    Stories wasn't a terrible implementation originally but getting rid of stuff like hashtags (which made a lot of people lose access to their wedding photos or important events and milestones in life), turning videos into "reels", creating threads to compete w/ twitter, fking with the feed w/ algorithmic based bs, paying for verified, deliberately preventing organic growth from happening anymore.

    Instgram ha
  • The new low in stupidity is the landscape video inside the portrait video. One is looking at an image, one-quarter of the size of the screen. I understand influencers not making one rotate the phone between close-up and wide scenes but many new videos are all PiP, where most of the image is needlessly tiny.

    Are social media 'creators' now so stupid that they don't learn how to present their video properly?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )

      Are social media 'creators' now so stupid that they don't learn how to present their video properly?

      Yes they are, almost all of them.

  • I wonder how that will work out for them in the long run?

  • Can anybody explain to me the use case for YouTube shorts, or any other looping material?

    I have never - not once - seen any piece of media that benefited at all from automatically repeating. Add to that the lack of seekability and the automatic restarting of material when you navigate away from it, and you couldn't make a more useless, brain dead method of media delivery if you assembled a focus group to drill down on the problem.

    And I can't just turn it off globally, even though I subscribe to premium. It'

    • Looping really isn't a benefit of them, it's just something other platforms do, so they did too. Shorts are meant for people with adhd attention spans who doom scroll for hours at a time not even completing more than a small fraction of the shorts they doom scroll past. Shorts are usually pretty obnoxious because they literally have about 1 second to catch the attention of an adhd doom scroller before they scroll past to the next. I really wish youtube would just give a PERMANENT turn off shorts filter. I k

Slashdot Top Deals

Do you suffer painful illumination? -- Isaac Newton, "Optics"

Close