Instagram is trying out 90-minute videos

Instagram is finally embracing long-form video and wants you to gather around your TV to watch content with friends. “For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said in a new horizontal video posted on the social media platform on Monday with Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product. In the nearly seven-minute video, Mosseri and Lyons explained the thinking behind a new feature called “Features,” which allowed users to post horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. Lyons said content creation has expanded to include Reels, posts, carousels, live-streaming, and episodic content, and Instagram wants to give creators another format. Beyond creators, Lyons said watching videos has become a shared experience, whether you’re dm’ing Reels back and forth or gathering in person to watch them on a TV screen. “We’ve been hearing for a long time that people love to watch Reels together in their living rooms with their friends, so we’ve been working on a TV version of Reels, and we know that to do that well, we need more than just short-form video,” Lyons said.