Social media platform Instagram has revealed details of a new long-form video service as it seeks to tackle Google-owned YouTube’s dominance in the market.
Instagram, which is owned by social media company Facebook, said IGTV will be a new app for watching long-form, vertical video of up to one hour in duration.
Instagram was launched in 2010 primarily as a photo-sharing platform, but has evolved to include videos of up to one minute in duration.
In a blog post, Instagram’s co-founder and chief executive, Kevin Systrom, said: “IGTV is different in a few ways. First, it’s built for how you actually use your phone, so videos are full screen and vertical. Also, unlike on Instagram, videos aren’t limited to one minute. Instead, each video can be up to an hour long.”
IGTV will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks and will eventually present Facebook with more opportunities to sell advertising.
The service was unveiled at an event in San Francisco yesterday (Wednesday), where it was also announced that Instagram had passed the one-billion user mark.