Short Form Content
As we know, short-form content is already quite popular on most social media platforms, with TikTok leading the charge. Even though the concept was introduced by Snapchat and perfected by Vine, it wasn't until the launch of the Chinese app with its vast collection of licensed music choices that creators finally got excited about building an audience for such content.
Today, almost every platform features some form of short-form content, with Instagram allowing both Stories and Reels. The problem with Instagram Stories was that any clip below 60 seconds was automatically cut down into multiple 15-second clips. This meant that if someone uploaded five 60-second clips to the platform, they would show up as 20 stories, with no clear indication of which ones are part of the same series.
Uninterrupted Stories
This new update solves this problem by letting users upload longer, uninterrupted videos to the platform. This way, they don't have to worry about users struggling with tapping through multiple slides just to get a single story idea. It also makes the story feed seem less cluttered, as the whole story will now feature as a single upload.
This wasn't that big of a problem for users who only uploaded one or two stories a day, but for creators who uploaded dozens of updates for their fans, this is a godsend. They can now upload up to 100 stories of 60 seconds each without having them show up as 400 entries. It also makes analytics tracking much easier, as now the creator knows exactly which ideas are getting the most traction.
Show All Function
Another feature added with this update is a new Show All button which will pop up as you browse through the stories of your favourite creators. This way, if you want to see everything they have uploaded, you can simply click on it and see what is on offer. If you don't tap on the button, the system will move on to the next creator after the individual story is finished running through. This makes it a lot easier to discover and explore any user's content without having to visit their profile.
Instagram is hoping that all these changes will make the Reels and Stories experience that much smoother for users who aren't that into short-form content. As they are looking to aggressively grow this section to compete with platforms like Tiktok, which firmly hold the market leader position, at least for now.
