Instagram rivals YouTube, unveils 'IGTV' mobile app for hour-long videos
YouTube has a serious competitor now from Facebook owned photo hosting social media site Instagram. Instagram has just launched what it calls IGTV which is basically a mobile app that permits users to shoot videos on their mobiles and share it with friends and the videos can be of up to 1-hour duration.
The objective appears to be to monetise the app and create a revenue stream through ads much like what the YouTube videos do for Google. And Instagram also plans to pull in celebrities to post their videos on the app, mainly to rapidly popularise the new platform.
Of particular interest to Instagram will be those with sizeable social media following already. To start with, Lele Pons, with over 25 million followers already on the main Instagram site, has been signed on. The star, however, has said that she will continue to post her videos on YouTube and the new IGTV app, without showing her preference in any way for one over the other. Going ahead, Instagram may pay the video creators for their posts, though there is no such move currently.
Facebook and YouTube are already at loggerheads with each other in luring people to their platforms to post videos and make money.
It is the marketers who will have a great time making corporates cough up dollars to promote their products on these celebrity-backed sites. There is a general sense that the time spent on watching television is rapidly dropping and that it is being taken over by videos on handheld devices. Apart from YouTube, Facebook and now Instagram, Snapchat is the other popular social media platform that is used for posting personal videos.