Instagram is set to roll out a slew of changes this weekend that conveniently resemble those of TikTok, but things take a dark turn in the US on Sunday after the Supreme Court rules in the case of parent company ByteDance to uphold a law banning the app. There is a possibility. I’m not selling it. These changes include increasing the length of reels to three minutes and replacing the square grid that has been used for years on profiles, as announced by Adam Mosseri in an Instagram post and his own Stories, respectively. This includes changing to a rectangular layout. Given how some users have created a particular look for their pages around square grids, it’s hard to imagine that the latter will be acceptable to everyone.
The same goes for the third one. The Reels feed has a tab that shows videos that friends have liked or added notes that Mosseri shared in a thread. This, of course, means your friends can more easily see what you’re liking and interacting with. When Instagram deprecated and eventually removed the entire feed for seeing the activities of the people you follow, didn’t you already agree that this was kind of invasive? Either way , changes are already starting to roll out. You’ll see a button in the top right corner of the (Reels) tab that shows your friends’ activity and will take you to a new feed.
Mosseri explained that the switch from a square grid in Stories was important to align with users’ posting habits. “I’m sure some of you love squares, and square photos are kind of a tradition on Instagram, but right now most of the photos and videos uploaded are vertical, so Orientation or landscape or square, and over-cropping is a shame,” he says. “So I know this is a change, and I know it’s a little bit of pain, but I think it’s transitional pain.” “I think in the long run people will be excited” about not having it look like they were “taken,” he said.
Instagram was already offering a TikTok-like view of users’ profiles in the “Reels” tab, but the latest move also gives photos on the main grid the rectangular treatment (though only on the grid, if you click It will then be enlarged to its normal size) (separately). Regarding longer Reels, Mosseri said in a separate post that while Instagram has long focused on short-form videos, “we’ve heard feedback that they’re too short for people who want to share longer stories.” Instagram previously only allowed Reels to be up to 90 seconds in length, but you could get around this by sharing longer videos as non-Reels posts.
TikTok also started with a focus on short form, but a few years ago it increased post length to three minutes, and then to 10 minutes in 2022. If TikTok does indeed shut down, users will be looking for new posts. Home for that type of content.
