I see the media (led by the Murdoch Press) have been reporting that Instagram plans to let people upload videos of an hour long. It’s a ‘rumour’ at the moment, apparently.
As those of you who follow this blog know, I’ve been able to upload videos exceeding one minute since April, and one theory that Justin Bgoni, who’s the bursar at my Alma Mater, St Mark’s Church School, advanced when I mentioned it to him was that I must be part of a trial.
That makes perfect sense and it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone with a great financial mind like Justin’s would conclude this. He says: we’re in New Zealand, it’s a small country, and there are probably 10,000 people who have been given the capability in advance. Soon, he theorized weeks ago, Instagram will roll it out to the general public. I think he’s right.
I’ve so far fielded two questions from strangers on how I do this, and I tell them the truth: I’ve just been able to, and I was as surprised as anyone else.
I don’t claim to have ‘special super power’ like this user does—and when I visited his Instagram, he doesn’t have a single video over a minute, so goodness knows what he’s talking about. (Having said that, I do like a lot of his uploads.) If you’re uploading 10 one-minute videos into a single post, that doesn’t count: almost anyone can do that, and it doesn’t take special powers, just patience.
There is a limit for me, however. I’ve attempted four times to upload a 9′3″ video to Instagram, and have failed each time, so we can conclude that that’s too long. However, I have managed 8′37″ as of today, so the present maximum length on Instagram must be between the two times.
I haven’t discovered too much more since I last posted on this topic, other than enjoying the freedom of having the greater length. (Instagram’s probably noted that, which is why the rumours have begun surfacing.) Engagement is still rather low on the long videos, for starters. Instagram only (rightly) counts full views, so there are videos with likes but 0 views recorded.
It’s nice, once again, to be ahead of the ball when it comes to these technologies, just as I have been with Google and Facebook. The exception here is that it’s been a positive feature rather than the usual negative ones, though I realize that since it’s Instagram, it comes with a load of Facebook-linked privacy issues. Just today it fired through another alcohol ad despite my having turned them off in my settings, again underlining Facebook’s blatant dishonesty.
Yet here I am, still using one of their services despite having mostly de-Facebooked (and de-Googled years before that). Like millions of others, I’m still a sucker because I continue to use a service they own.
Speaking of the Murdoch Press and Google, we (at work) actually deal with the former when it comes to advertising. Let that sink in for a moment: I trust Murdochs more than I trust Google when it comes to our users’ privacy. That’s saying something.
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