Instagram announced on February 11, Thursday it will add video views to the mobile app's homescreen to replace the Like counter during the next weeks. The move follows the trend among social networks and video sharing platforms such as Google's YouTube, Twitter's Vine, and its parent company Facebook.
People will still be able to see how many Likes an Instagram video has. They just have to tap the view count to see the figure, according to The Verge.
In a blog post Instagram calls view counts a popular "industry metric." It argues that it is the best way to measure a viewer's intent and shows how people are interacting with the video.
The new feature will also benefit advertisers. This is especially true for Instagram users whose videos get sky-high views per day.
However, video view count is a system that can also cause debates as different platforms count videos differently. For example, Facebook defines a "view" as three seconds, but for Snapshot it is reportedly one millisecond, according to International Business Times.
On the other hand, YouTube counts total watch time. Its goal is to boost how much time viewers watch videos, and expose them to more video ads.
The video-sharing site will use Facebook's three-second metric to count clips. The world's largest social network has shared a Nielsen study showing that 47 percent of a video's value in an ad campaign is delivered within that period of time.
Instagram reports that during the last six months its customers have spent 40 percent more time watching videos on its mobile app. Meanwhile, Facebook monthly active users (MACs) daily watch over 100 million hours of video.
The Facebook-ownedcompany plans to roll out more video updates soon. It recently upped its video length limit from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.
The official Instagram app is also launching multiple-account support for iOS and Android devices, which it beta tested in November 2015. This allows people to use one smartphone or tablet to manage personal and professional accounts.
Instagram is a mobile photo sharing and video sharing social network that was released in October 2010 and bought by Facebook in 2012. It now has 400 million MACs.
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