VOA Special English
Instagram Launches 60-Second Videos

    2016/3/31

    This is What's Trending Today…

    The media-sharing application Instagram will soon have 60-second videos.

    Instagram announced its plan to have longer videos earlier this week. Currently, Instagram has a 15-second video time limit.

    The company said that the time people have spent watching videos on the application increased by more than 40 percent in six months. It also said that the longer video feature will be available to some users immediately. The feature will be available to everyone in the coming months.

    Instagram is demonstrated on an iPhone, in New York. (AP Photo/Karly Domb Sadof, File)
    Instagram is demonstrated on an iPhone, in New York. (AP Photo/Karly Domb Sadof, File)

    Instagram again will permit iPhone users to join together clips from different videos on their phones. The feature is similar to Vine videos or Snapchat's Stories. Snapchat announced a new video-chatting feature on the same day that Instagram announced its plan for longer videos.

    Experts say that video is the next big step in social media. Instagram's parent company, Facebook, says its users worldwide watch more than 100 million hours of video each day.

    Longer Instagram videos will help the company better compete with sites like YouTube.

    And that's What's Trending Today.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Words in This Story

    chat - v. to talk over the Internet by sending messages back and forth in a chat room

    parent company - n. a company that owns or controls another company