It’s no secret that video is king and it’s backed up by the stats, too - with more than 50% of users’ time spent on Facebook going to watching video and 20% of users’ time on Instagram going to Reels, Meta is making their next move.
In a video posted by the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri on May 4th, the CEO describes a new user experience that will see video take centre stage even more so on the image-sharing app.
In a TikTok-like layout, instead of tapping into Reels on the home feed to watch them resized to your full phone screen, they will appear full-sized to begin with as you scroll. The idea here is that you can more seamlessly enjoy video content as you scroll your feed, with fewer taps necessary and an overall less jarring experience as you consume content as a user. In fact, the update stretches everything to take up the full size of your phone screen - the immersive new feed layout still shows the top and bottom navigation bars, but photos and videos will now be taller, with Instagram referring to this move being informed by the new ‘mobile-first’ consumption of content.
The move by Meta arrives in line with the latest reports that Reels is now the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram, something that was previously arguably predicted back in December, when in a video Mosseri said “We’re going to double-down on our focus on video and consolidate all of our video formats around Reels”.
The new mode is now being tested by a small handful of users, but there’s no news yet on whether it will be rolled out across all accounts.
What else do you think Instagram could be up to? Do you think they’ll be moving even closer to a TikTok-style model?
avails Social - content creation agency Melbourne.
