Instagram Meets YouTube
What set Instagram, and to an extent TikTok, apart from its peers was largely down to its video format. Set in a vertical format with videos no more than a few seconds long, the platform offered short, addictive content that constantly pushed you to scroll up. Others may have borrowed the format, but Instagram has dominated this space of short-form content.
Now, Instagram has revealed that it is testing a new long-form video format that will allow creators to upload horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. Called Features, it is being tested in Brazil and will now be expanded to creators in the US. Making this announcement in a nearly seven-minute-long video on the platform, Instagram’s Vice President of Product Tessa Lyons said, “Instagram is all about connecting people over creativity. And creativity is so much more than just short-form video or posting carousels.”
The move is part of Instagram’s attempt to capture more of the entertainment landscape. It is now realising it is missing out on other equally popular forms such as podcasts, standups and other long-form formats that mostly exist on YouTube. The Features format will be available on mobile, but the goal, Lyons says, is to carry the experience over to Instagram for TV. The platform is also rebooting Instagram Live and experimenting with a feature that will give episodic Reels a dedicated space on a creator’s profile.
CODING SUPREMACY
GitHub may be the pre-eminent cloud platform for developers to store, manage, and collaborate on software code, but its former CEO Thomas Dohmke has just launched another platform that does exactly the same. Called Git forge, the launch comes at a time when GitHub, straining under the load from AI agents, has witnessed several outages. Dohmke claims the new service can handle up to 89 times as many code pushes per second as GitHub.
iPHONE DUO’S PROBLEM
The iPhone Duo may have caused a huge buzz, but as it reaches customers, it has hit a bit of a bump. Social media has lately been filled with accounts of the phone’s hinge tightening, and how opening the device then causes a crack in the inner display. Apple has acknowledged the problem and claims it’s an issue with only a small number of units. It has asked those who encounter it to contact AppleCare for a replacement.
ANTHROPIC IPO
Ahead of its IPO, Anthropic revealed in a financial prospectus that its revenue was $16.3 billion in the first half of the year and net loss at $80.7 billion. The IPO could push Anthropic’s valuation to $2 trillion, past Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the world’s biggest IPO, and could raise more than $100 billion. But it still needs up to $807 billion for the data centers, chips and computing power it has committed to for the next 10 years.