Instagram, as evidenced by the sad person with a non-iPhone device in the photo above, is a great place to flex one's cinematic muscles with experimental short films. Sadly, those videos end up simply existing without any true measurement for how popular they are aside from likes and/or comments. That's (finally) about to change, according to Mashable, as Instagram is now planning to roll out view counts for videos in the coming weeks.
The move, which is reportedly geared toward garnering a wider array of video ads, will count one view as "at least three seconds watched," which is great news for anyone who kind of hates YouTube's 30-second rule. Earlier this month, Instagram started allowing brands to share 30-second videos while still condemning common, non-brand humans to the usual 15-second purgatory.
Instagram's video engagement rate, according to Mashable, has jumped 40 percent over the last six months. With burgeoning auteurs like Kylie Jenner currently spreading their cinematic experiments all over Snapchat whilst receiving unanimous praise, the 'gram is definitely making the right move by focusing more energy on its video features.
Perhaps, within the next decade or so, we'll see the first Oscar-nominated Instagram video?
