Meta-owned photo sharing platform Instagram is shutting down its standalone app for Instagram TV (IGTV) and will instead focus on keeping all videos on the main Instagram app. The IGTV app, that was launched as Instagram’s competitor to YouTube, was not able to gain the popularity the company had hoped for when the app was first launched back in 2018. Now, however, it marks an end to Instagram’s foray into longer videos.
Instagram, in its blog post, said that the company is getting rid of the standalone IGTV app as “part of its efforts to make videos as simple and possible to discover and create." The blog post also says that videos in the main app will have a full-screen viewer with tap-to-mute, and that the company is also working on a way to make sharing and viewing videos easier. Instagram is also planning on “testing a feature that will bring ads on Reels." Instagram’s parent company Meta confirmed the shut down of the IGTV app and was quoted by TechCrunch as saying that the app will shut completely in mid-March.
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The IGTV app was launched back in 2018 and was meant to be a competitor to YouTube for vertical videos. The Instagram app also had an IGTV button that took users to IGTV content on the main app, but Instagram removed that button in 2020 saying that very few people use it, and last year, the company had announced that IGTV was being renamed “Instagram TV." The company also said it plans to bring IGTV’s hour-long time limit to regular videos as well.
The ads, known as IGTV ads that were put in videos that were over a minute long have also been removed from the platform and the company has said that it intends to focus on videos heavily. This comes after the company last year said that it is not a photo-sharing app anymore.
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In its announcement, Instagram also reiterated its focus on short form videos, Reels. The company said that Reels will continue to be the largest contributor to engagement growth on the app and that the company plans to continue to invest in Reels. “Reels continues to be a growing and important part of Instagram and we are excited to invest even more in this format," Instagram said in the blog post.
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