IGTV is Instagram brings longform vertical video content from and for everyone

Facebook-owned Instagram is expanding way beyond its current breadth of Stories of minute-long video clips and 50 filters piled on top of albums.

IGTV is currently rolling out worldwide on Android and iOS as its own standalone app with access from the original Instagram app as well. Alerts for new videos on IGTV will appear at the top of users’ Instagram feeds.

The viewing experience is straightforward: users have four tabs of “channels” to inspect, all “channels” being content being produced from users such as King Bach all the way to your friends: “For You” is a algorithm-curated feed, “Following” puts the latest videos from who you’re following, “Popular” give a space for the most-watched videos in a period and “Continue Watching” allows viewers to pick up videos they’ve left behind. Just as with regular pictures, videos and Stories, there are comment, like and direct message-sharing functions.

Creating a video is as simple as shooting vertical clips — easy to do with smartphones these days — from 15 seconds up to an hour each.

No word on any ad platforms just yet, so it’ll mean that creators will have to personally work with any potential sponsors to garner revenue. And with a just-announced user count of 1 billion, there’s plenty of money to be made in this marketplace.

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