Today sees a big change to Instagram‘s user interface, with two new home screen tabs: Reels and Shop.
The company says that Reels – the short video format it cloned from TikTok – has never been more relevant …
The coronavirus crisis has similarly raised the profile of app-based shopping.
At Instagram, our focus has always been on young people and creators because they’re trendsetters. Change is happening quickly right now, including how both of these groups use Instagram and engage with the world. This year, with the pandemic and much of the world sheltering in place, we’ve seen an explosion in short, entertaining videos on Instagram […]
We first launched Reels a few months ago – and we’ve already seen amazing reels from creators, like roller skating with @esty, comedy from @cameronjhenderson, motivation from @paperboytheprince, and wheelchair choreography from dance team @rolletes_la. Now, we’re rolling out the Reels tab to be a kind of a stage, a place where people can share their creativity with the world and have a chance to break out and find an audience.
Instagram owner Facebook is clearly well aware that everyone hates change, so has used the announcement to try to reduce the inevitable complaints.
We’ve also seen an incredible amount of shopping move online, with more and more people buying online and young people looking to their favorite creators for recommendations on what to buy.
With the Shop tab, we’re making it easy to get inspired by creators you love, shop on Instagram, and support small businesses. You can find personalized recommendations, editors’ picks curated by our @shop channel, shoppable videos, new product collections, and more.
While Reels is all about short videos, the company also recently increased the maximum length of live broadcasts to four hours.
We don’t take these changes lightly – we haven’t updated Instagram’s home screen in a big way for quite a while. But how people create and enjoy culture has changed, and the biggest risk to Instagram is not that we change too fast, but that we don’t change and become irrelevant. We’re excited about the new design and believe it gives the app a much-needed refresh, while staying true to our core value of simplicity. We’ll continue listening to your feedback so we can keep improving Instagram for you.
