Owing to its immense popularity, Instagram has extended the length of its “Reels” video to 60 seconds. It is the second time when Instagram has increased the duration ever since the company introduced the feature in August 2020. In the beginning, the length of a single “Reels” video was capped at 15 seconds. Just a month later, Instagram rolled out an update that increased the duration to 30 seconds. But why did Instagram extend the duration to one minute?
TikTok, Instagram Reels’ main rival, had a 60-second limit for content on its platform until recently. It benefited a lot of people especially those who make videos related to cooking, or storytelling. As a result, a lot of people still favored TikTok over Instagram because they were able to create content that was 30 seconds longer.
However, TikTok recently announced that it was going to expand its limit to 3 minutes, and it was welcomed by a majority of content creators. So can we expect Instagram to roll out another update in the future? It might be a possibility because, in January, Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s executive said, “To be honest, we are behind TikTok.” With TikTok’s latest update, the gap might have widened between the two and Instagram would be eager to bridge this gap.
Additionally, Instagram is also planning to introduce new protection policies for teenagers who use the platform. According to the latest reports, new users under the age of 16 would have their accounts private by default. This means that other users who don’t follow them will not be able to see their Reels, Stories, and Posts.
Not only that, every teenager would get a notification that would explain to them the benefits of having a private account. These privacy policies might prevent these youngsters from coming in contact with suspicious accounts.
