Instagram's New Video Sharing App IGTV Goes Live, YouTube Alarmed

Instagram launches a new video app, IGTV, which is a perfect blend of YouTube, Snapchat, and other platforms, made available in iOS and Android. Additionally, the main Instagram app will feature a dedicated section for IGTV. IGTV will let anyone be a creator – it lets everyone upload vertical videos through Instagram’s app or the web. Select creators will be allowed to upload hour-long videos immediately, whereas small and new accounts can extend up-to 10 minutes.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom says that the new app will not play all videos, but only the ‘best’ ones. The new app makes it easier to find and watch videos instantly because IGTV will simply start playing videos the moment you open it giving you TV watching experience. Social-networking, thus, gets more real with videos. Among other things, this “lean back” mode could make a powerful new place for Instagram to place ads.

The list of real losers with this new launch would be many, and YouTube is on top of the list. YouTube with its very frequent changes has earned a lot of affected and annoyed young users recently, and this could greatly help IGTV attract users with minimum efforts. The app is followed by hungry beasts who need more space to place their ads, however, Systrom confirmed that there will no ads on IGTV to start but considers it to be ‘a reasonable place to end up.’ “It’s time for videos to move forward, and evolve”, he said.