Instagram Swore Off Long Videos. Now It's Testing 90-Minute Ones.

TWO years ago, Adam Mosseri sat across from Colin and Samir and explained, on the record, why Instagram would never do this. Connecting friends sits next to short-form video, he said, and short-form sits next to long-form — “but long-form video and connecting friends aren’t adjacent.” Chasing long video, he said, would erode Instagram’s core reason to exist.

On Monday, Mosseri posted a six-minute video — horizontal, naturally — and took it all back. Instagram is now testing Features: long-form, horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long, uploaded by creators and served in the main feed and on Explore. Podcasts, vlogs, interviews — the exact content that has always lived on YouTube — now plays where the followers already are.

“It’s early, and we’re testing and listening to feedback as we go,” Mosseri wrote in the announcement post, made alongside VP of Product Tessa Lyons. “But we’re excited to give creators more room to tell their stories with the communities they’ve already built here.”

How it works. A Feature doesn’t ambush you with a 90-minute commitment in the feed. You meet a short preview clip while scrolling; tap “Watch full video” and you’re in the full episode without leaving the app. Creators can also attach Reels as trailers — up to eight clips pointing at one long video — turning the discovery engine they already use into a funnel for the full-length cut. That clip-to-episode path has never existed natively on Instagram. Until now, the clip’s whole job was to beg you to go somewhere else.

The scale of the jump is real: Reels’ vertical ceiling was 20 minutes. Features quadruple-and-a-half it, in the horizontal orientation podcasts and interviews are actually shot in.

Who gets it. Not you, yet — this is a test, and Instagram is being plain about that. The format was trialed with creators in Brazil first; the US test started Monday with a select group — early names include podcast host and Skims co-founder Emma Grede, Monet McMichael, interviewer Preston Rakovsky and football creator Donald De La Haye — and expands from there to tens of thousands of US creators. Mosseri expects the limited rollout to widen to “more and more people” from here.

The second front is your television. Instagram is updating its TV app to prioritize Features — it’s already on Samsung, Fire TV and Google TV, with Apple TV arriving this month — and a Friends tab will show what people you know are watching and resharing on the big screen. Two more pieces are coming soon: Series, a dedicated home on a creator’s profile for episodic Reels you can binge in order (built for shows like Subway Takes), and second-screen controls — use your phone as the remote, save on mobile, pause a Feature on your phone and pick it back up on the TV.

What’s not coming: background playback. Close the app and the audio stops — Mosseri said that could change later, and for podcast listeners, that’s not a small footnote.

And the catch. There is no revenue-sharing program — not for Features, not for Reels. YouTube pays eligible creators 55% of ad revenue; Instagram is instead cutting individual deals with some early creators and letting everyone else bring their own brand deals with them. There’s no exclusivity — a Feature can live on YouTube too, sponsorships and all — and Lyons told The Hollywood Reporter the pitch is two-sided: established creators “can bring that content with those placements and that branded content,” while Instagram sees “a big opportunity” to help creators who don’t yet have that business behind them.

— Previously’s Take: The funnel is the story. Every podcast and interview show we cover — including Colin and Samir, who got the exclusive — already lives this workflow: post the clip to Instagram, pray the audience follows a link to YouTube. Features deletes the prayer. But Instagram is asking creators to do YouTube-sized work for exposure and their own sponsor deals, while YouTube writes a 55% check. That math holds exactly as long as the audience does. And notice where the fight is pointed: the living room, where YouTube is currently the most-watched thing on television, period. Instagram tried long-form once — IGTV — and buried it for Reels. This time it’s not building a separate app and hoping. It’s putting the full episode one tap from the clip, in the feed people already open fifty times a day. That’s a much more serious swing.

Related on Previously: our Podcasts coverage — the shows this format is built for.