Instagram might soon allow its users to share videos for up to an hour. This new feature would let users post long-form clips of up to an hour. That would open new creative flexibility for users and bring Instagram closer in line with YouTube and its own parent company, Facebook.
The plan is described as tentative, so Instagram could ultimately decide against radically extending the maximum running time of videos on its platform.
The new feature will focus on vertical video. Instagram Stories are already designed around that tall, vertical video format, and the report doesn’t clarify whether longer videos would be allowed only in that section of the app or also permitted in the main feed. At present, Instagram Stories are limited to a length of 15 seconds; videos in the main feed can run a little longer at 60 seconds.
The Stories feature had over 300 million daily active users as of last November. Instagram itself has over 800 million users. The company has “in recent weeks” held discussions with potential partners about the possibility of producing longer-form videos.
