Videos on Instagram just got four times longer

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Food photography
And you can throw in multiple clips, too.
Photo: Brigham Young University

Once an app only for photos, Instagram is now greatly extending its video capabilities. Coming soon, users will be able to share videos up to 60 seconds in length. Instagram started rolling out this change today and says more improvements to video are coming in a future update.

One such improvement Instagram says will arrive sooner rather than later is the reemergence of multi-clip video on iOS. This means that you’ll be able to import multiple video clips from your Photos library and stitch them together for a single Instagram video. It might sound familiar because Instagram actually used to have this feature… before taking it away.

With multi-clip support and four times longer video, hopefully we’ll see a nice influx of creativity sweep across Instagram that takes advantage of those features. Either that or minute-long Kylie Jenner lip challenges. Whatever.

Instagram’s news comes just a few hours after Snapchat announced a huge update that brings audio and video calling to its app. Though both video-oriented updates are geared toward users, Instagram’s is definitely a move more likely to please advertisers too. Advertisers already had 15 seconds longer for videos than users did, so now both are getting the boost to the full minute which presents more room for commercials.

According to the Instagram Blog, time spent watching video on Instagram has risen by about 40 percent in the last six months. So while longer video should easily please that audience, Instagram has still been having a hard time over the past couple of weeks pleasing everyone else. It revealed to strong backlash that the reverse chronological order of photos and videos would soon get replaced by a smart algorithm that displays what’s most important to you first.

Well, at least you’ll now have 45 more seconds to complain about that to your followers. 60-second video is a slow roll-out though — despite beginning today, it won’t reach every user for a few more months.

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