Instagram might have been down for hours, but it surely’s again with an arguably overdue change to how the social community handles movies. The Facebook model is merging its long-form IGTV format with the common movies out of your feed, leaving only one format for all Instagram footage — you will not have to differentiate between the 2. We’ve requested Instagram if this can result in longer movies taking part in immediately in your feed, however there’ll at all times be a Video tab in profiles to discover extra content material.

The transfer may assist Instagram-based creators, too. While they’re going to nonetheless have to supply long-form video to qualify for adverts (now known as Instagram In-Stream video adverts), they need to have a neater time reaching viewers who would have glossed over IGTV previously. Instagram can be merging submit and video insights right into a single metric.

You might have a neater time sprucing that video, too. Instagram is bringing just a few widespread modifying options to its movies, together with trimming, filters, location tags and other people tags. Still photographs have had filters and tags for some time, after all, however this theoretically places transferring footage extra on par. You might have a neater time discovering movies linked to a good friend or a memorable live performance.

The merger may enhance uptake for Instagram video. IGTV demand wasn’t what Instagram anticipated, and this replace makes the longer video format extra accessible, to not point out much less complicated. Creators is likely to be extra inclined to share movies on Instagram because of this — and which may assist the social media big higher compete towards TikTok, YouTube and different video-focused heavyweights.