Why Instagram Now Accepts 60-Second Video Posts

By Jose de la Cruz | Mar 31, 2016 11:35 AM EDT

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Good news to Instagram users: from now on, you can now post videos of up to one minute in length. Previously, users are only allowed to post 15 second videos on the site.

The time duration was extended as Facebook wants the lure more advertisers in its social media network and away from its rivals YouTube and Snapchat.

This new feature was initially made available only to a select number of users. However, a blog post from the social media network on Tuesday said this feature will be made available to all it users in the coming months.

In Tuesday's announcement, the Facebook-backed social media site stated that it decided to extend the video length since it wanted to provide flexible and creative ways on how its users can view and make videos on the app.

At the time when the videos were limited to just 15 seconds, the company was up against Vine, a rival network which only allows 6-second video clips.

When Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012, the network began to push for more video content as its strategy to increase its revenue streams. Now that Facebook is pitted against YouTube, which is the most popular video sharing service in the internet, it wants to extend the length of the videos users are allowed to post in the site.

Soon as the word came out, Warner Bros and T-Mobile were the first advertisers who want to take advantage of the latest Instagram feature.

According to the social media company, people watching videos on social media increased by over 40 percent. For the companies hosting them, that means additional revenues from advertising.

Instagram also announced that starting this year, it will also show the number of views a video has received. This is the company's strategy to prove the popularity of the videos on its app.

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