Instagram says it will stop supporting IGTV app

Instagram has announced that it will no longer support the standalone IGTV app. Separately, it said in a blog post that it will focus on keeping all videos in the main Instagram app. While Instagram’s YouTube rival has been written on the walls, the official announcement of the shutdown marks the end of an era for Instagram in the video.

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Instagram said in its post that it was moving away from the standalone IGTV app as “part of an effort to make a video as easy as possible to discover and create.” The post also says that any video in the main app will have a full-screen viewer and tap-to-mute feature and that Instagram is working on a consistent way to share different types of videos. Separately, the company plans to test a new ad experience on Instagram later this year that will allow creators to earn money from ads displayed on their reels.

Announced in 2018, the standalone IGTV app aims to take on YouTube by being a place to post long-form vertical videos. Less than a year later, IGTV content is heavily promoted in the main Instagram app, with videos showing up on the Explore page and previews showing up on Stories and the main page. In 2020, Instagram removed the button to access IGTV content in the main app, citing few people using it. Late last year, the company announced that IGTV was being rebranded as “Instagram TV,” and that IGTV’s one-hour time limit would also be used for regular video.

While both the IGTV app and In-Stream ads that insert videos of more than a minute are going away, Instagram has made it very clear that it still intends to focus heavily on video.

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