Instagram TV shortly termed as IGTV was Facebook’s plan of ushering a new era of binge-watching videos on Instagram. The company placed several channels inside the app where users could be able to access IGTV from. Unfortunately, some channels are rarely used by people.
In response to TechCrunch, an Instagram spokesperson said the company has removed the IGTV button from the top of the app’s main interface.
The main reason behind the move is that, well, Instagram users rarely click on the IGTV button.
“Very few are clicking into the IGTV icon in the top right corner of the home screen in the Instagram app,” a Facebook company spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The company says that it has discovered many users find IGTV content from the creators’ profiles, the Explore page, through video previews in the Feed, from the standalone IGTV app.
The move is also intended to make Instagram “as simple as possible.”
These changes have already been implemented in Instagram’s latest update if you have downloaded it.
However, it would have been fair for the company to discontinue the standalone IGTV app as well. The app has not gone mainstream yet since its launch in June 2018.
To date, IGTV has not clocked the 10 million downloads mark yet. Its Play Store listing estimates the downloads to be over 1 million. After all, IGTV can be found on Instagram via multiple locations – via the Feed previews, has its tab on the Explore page, and also has a place right from the profile tabs.
At the same time, creators have yet to find monetization ways to make more money from IGTV videos, which has made the creator community prefer other platforms to post their long-form videos.
Instagram’s support to creators has been minimal with only a few selected creators contracting with the company to cover their video production costs. But those contracts reportedly bar them from making content concerning politics, social issues, or elections.
Source/TechCrunch
