Videos are the only way to go. Its the most biggest driving force for any kind of product or service or brand. Earlier it used to be “PICTURE or it never HAPPENED” and now its “VIDEO or it never HAPPENED”. Instagram had videos in the feed and stories both, but now they have a dedicated video only app called IGTV which is taking on YouTube straight, since they have a huge 1 billion+ users on the platform right now. 

In IGTV’s dedicated app or its in-Instagram experience, viewers will be able to swipe through a variety of longer-form videos, or swipe up to visit a Browse tab of personally recommended videos, popular videos, creators they’re following and the option to continue watching previously started videos. Users will also get callouts from the IGTV button alerting them to new content.

If you are not following me on Instagram yet, there you go – www.instagram.com/soamjena

MY THOUGHTS : GOOD THINGS –

1. Videos are full screen and vertical – awesome!
2. Creators can simply make videos with their front camera on their smartphone – super awesome!
3. The vertical real estate is amazing for a lot of videos – amazing!
4. The inspiration for videos are going to be great like we have pinterest for photos – super pumped!
5. The comments and description now supports links too – excited!
6. You can upload your own IGTV videos in the app or on the web to start your own channel – superb!
7. You can upload up-to 1hour long video for bigger accounts and small accounts can do upto 10 mins – I like this limit!

MY THOUGHTS : BAD THINGS –

1. It says, it supports 4K, but Im on iPhone X and Samsung s8+ and I dont see high resolution even if Im on a 400Mbps internet connection at home right now
2. The content delivery servers doesn’t seem to be coming from regular FB CDN servers, as the videos are lagging so bad
3. The interface is not very user friendly and the call out buttons are hidden, unless you click on it
4. The iOS instagram app is still not showing the IGTV icon
5. The videos which you manually start to play from IGTV users on android, it starts with volume 0 and you have to increase the volume tab
6. Instagram should have implemented this thing directly on their native Instagram app, which is already a photo + video platform
7. The app is buggy right now, the copy link lands to a page not found 404 page
8. Monetization isn’t live yet for creators
9. The transcoding is bad, its rendering 4K video like 480p or 720p vertically
10. The follow button is hidden small icon, it should be prominent
11. They should let users watch IGTV videos of the people they follow directly on Instagram app, as no one wants to install a new app to just see IGTV videos.