IGTV stands for Instagram TV. A week ago when Instagram announced the launch of IGTV, it was considered a direct competition to Youtube. I tried using IGTV and here is my take on why it is going to become the best video viewing platform on mobile.
Vertical or Long Form Video
The selling point for IGTV is that vertical video or long-form video is the best viewing experience for mobile. Traditionally, TV screens, laptops, movie theatres have all been rectangular (more width less height) leading to producing video content that is horizontal. However, most of the content away from the main focus is actually not worth paying attention to. Here is a visual of what I mean:
When you are watching video on TV, it makes sense to have a horizontal video form but when mobile came out with video, we tried to fit the traditional video formats into a phone screen, leading to a bad user experience. People got used to tilting their phones in order to view the video full screen which is actually not a natural behavior.
A lot of folks in the transition to mobile — which is still ongoing — were taking video that was formatted for livestream desktop and TV, and they were jamming that creative into a mobile feed — Evan Spiegel, CEO Snap
Snap has been famous for pushing Vertical Video efforts however received a lot of friction from advertisers and creators who would make content for TV and Youtube which was mostly horizontal form. Now that Instagram has pushed IGTV with only Vertical Video form, we are seeing greater adoption already.
How to get started on IGTV?
On your main feed page, you will see a TV button on top right. Click on it and press the gear, to create your own channel. Then upload your video along with a cover image. Note that if you get this error “Upload failed” you will have to change your cover image size to 4:5 to successfully upload it. The same applies when you are uploading via the web as well. Watch this video for a detailed walkthrough:
Now that you have posted your first video, lets talk about the confusing parts of using IGTV:
TOO MANY WAYS TO POST
With stories, instagram posts (which inherently support both images and videos) and now IGTV, it is very confusing for creators and users to have a clear direction on where to post/consume what content. IGTV is meant for posting videos that are longer than 1 minute but at the same time Instagram is a platform where users are just used to watching videos for a short period of time.
I realized the best way to adopt to this new platform is to post all your videos on IGTV creating separate channels both short and long. Reserve the feed to share what’s coming up on your IGTV channel, regular pictures and product promotions. And reserve the stories to share “in the moment” content and even promotional material for your IGTV channel for example — video reactions or even offer sneak peaks for next video you will be sharing. I realized this process would allow creators to clearly direct traffic.
MORE ANALYTICS AND A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION
IGTV currently reports views and allows users to comment, like and share. While it provides basic insights like video retention, average duration and a graph for where users are abandoning the video, these analytics are not so enriched as the ones Youtube provides. It would be nice to see where your traffic is coming from, if users are sharing your video, and allow users to subscribe to your channel. Right now IGTV lacks this.
Also, there is no clear way to share your IGTV channel. You get a link that you can share via your bio, twitter or facebook however I realized it is the most inefficient form of sharing. Instagram should embed “deeplinking” capability to realize the IGTV content from within Instagram making sharing seamless between Instagram, Facebook and IGTV itself.
VIDEO PLAYER HAS COMPATIBILITY ISSUES
Vertical video is a challenge since it is hard to adjust content based on different screen sizes. What this means is that sometimes content is cut off on some phones and it is very noticeable if you view any IGTV video from web. There needs to be a consistent experience across different mobile screens and devices.
DO NOT AUTO-PLAY VIDEOS
Very recently, Google decided that it would ban autoplay videos, especially those with sound because they created an overall bad experience for the user. With IGTV, even though sound plays on intent the video starts auto-playing.
OVERALL AN AVERAGE USER EXPERIENCE
I mean when you enter the feed, my eyes start hurting because I am not sure if I should focus on the video in the background or scroll through content to actually play what I like. Overall, I would rate the UI 5/10 with functionality being there but not clean enough for me to engage.
The main feed page somehow seems cluttered in the way it looks and feels. There is search, background video, categories, and a huge scroll through list of videos you could play all shoved into one single screen.
Also, not sure why there is duration beside each video, the long titles and cut off user names. When I do press “Search” I am searching through the people I follow and not video content I want to watch. The UI does not do justice to present relevant and required information clearly. I actually, think Snapchat did a great job when it comes to UI with vertical videos keeping the overall experience cleaner and clearer.
AUTO CONVERT HORIZONTAL FORM TO VERTICAL
If IGTV’s differentiation is the Vertical Video, it is failing to achieve that standard because users are still allowed to post horizontal videos where you have to turn the phone side ways and videos embedded into the vertical long form. Both of these do not offer the true full screen experience of a vertical video that IGTV looked to provide in the first place. And this leads to confusion. For IGTV to truly stand up for its “differentiating” factor, there needs to be tools supported to convert horizontal to long form almost automatically. This is a technical challenge but if you can crop photos why can you not crop videos, and even add filters? This is how instagram started out in the first place — with photos and filters, same applies to IGTV now.
Overall, IGTV can become the best video viewing experience on mobile out there because vertical video provides that level of immersion and quality that is best suited for the phone and Instagram has the platform of creators and followers to make this happen closely following musical.ly (the teen video sensation). However, there needs to be a clear direction of being that video viewing platform like a Netflix or Youtube in all fronts — tech and UX. Right now though, there is more work to be done on making the overall experience seamless both the video creation process as well as the video playback experience.
