Instagram Extending Length of Reels to Compete with TikTok and YouTube
According to Alessandro Paluzzi, a trusted mobile developer and leaker, Instagram seems poised to substantially extend the maximum duration of Reels posts. Currently, these videos are limited to three minutes, but screenshots shared by Paluzzi suggest that the upcoming update will allow for videos up to 10 minutes in length. If implemented, this change would essentially elevate Instagram from a mere social media platform to a more comprehensive video-sharing platform akin to YouTube.
The move would also give Meta’s Instagram a chance to compete with rival TikTok, which already allows users to post videos up to ten minutes long. TikTok and Instagram seem to have fallen into some kind of mimicry, with one app regularly adopting features the other originally revealed.
As TikTok and Instagram compete for a share of the long-form video pie, YouTube is moving in the opposite direction. It’s been looking to gain more ground in the short-form video space, recently adding a set of creator tools and a TikTok-like music discovery feed. Gone are the days when you could easily tag Instagram as a “photo”, TikTok as a “short video” and YouTube as a “long video”. It seems like they all want to be the “do it all together”.
ReturnByte asked Meta for clarification on the move toward long-form video content and will update this post when we hear back.
