Instagram has announced that they will no longer support the standalone app IGTV, they said Instagram will now focus on storing all videos in its main app, Instagram.
Launching from The Verge, Wednesday (2/3/2022) through a post on the official Instagram blog, they said the discontinuation of the standalone app IGTV was part of its efforts to make videos as simple as possible to find and create.
Instagram also says that every video in the main app will have a full-screen and tap-to-mute viewer and Instagram works consistently to share different types of videos such as video posts or Reels.
Not only that, Instagram is also planning to test a new ad experience on Instagram that will allow creators to earn revenue from ads shown on their Reels by the end of this year.
It is known that the IGTV standalone application was announced in 2018 and its presence aims to compete with YouTube with the concept of posting long-form vertical videos.
Less than a year later IGTV content is being heavily promoted on the main Instagram app with videos appearing on the Explore page, and previews appearing in Stories and in feeds.
In 2020, Instagram removed the button that took users to IGTV content in the main app on the grounds that very few people were using it and late last year Instagram announced that IGTV was rebranded as Instagram TV.
While the IGTV app will be discontinued along with In-Stream ads embedding into videos longer than one minute, Instagram has made it clear that it still intends to focus on video.
"Continuing our video investment on Instagram," reads the blog post announcing IGTV's retirement.
Last year Instagram's leadership said it was no longer a photo app - it was catching up with competitors like TikTok and YouTube in a bid to become a mainstream entertainment app.
Since then, Instagram has rewarded creators with up to $35,000 in bonuses for posting on Reel, and there have been many new video features added to the main Instagram app though many of them were copied from TikTok.