For years, social media platforms have been competing to make content shorter, faster, and easier to consume. Now, Instagram is testing whether the future includes more long-form content.
On October 26, 2026, Instagram announced that it was testing Features, a new video format allowing selected creators to upload horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes. The experiment, initially tested in Brazil and now expanding to selected creators in the United States, is designed to accommodate longer interviews, podcasts, vlogs, and other forms of content.
At first glance, the move appears to be an attempt to compete more directly with YouTube, which has long dominated the long-form video space. But there is something more interesting happening here.
Instagram is not necessarily moving away from short-form content. It is attempting to bring short-form discovery and long-form engagement together within the same ecosystem.
This is particularly significant given how platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and even LinkedIn have increasingly embraced short-form video to attract audiences and encourage content consumption.
Instagram’s strategy appears to serve two interconnected objectives: retaining users for longer periods and creating additional opportunities for creators to monetize their content.
For Meta, the potential benefits are considerable. If audiences can discover a creator through a short Reel and subsequently watch a longer interview or podcast without leaving Instagram, the company could retain attention that might otherwise migrate to YouTube or another platform.
For creators, longer content could provide additional opportunities for sponsorships, brand partnerships, and deeper audience relationships. YouTube already offers an established advertising revenue-sharing program for eligible creators, whereas Instagram has yet to introduce an equivalent model for Features.
As reported by TechCrunch, a Meta spokesperson acknowledged that it was still too early to establish a long-term monetization model, although the company was exploring opportunities involving brands, fans, and performance-based incentives.
And this raises an interesting question: Could Instagram eventually become a platform where creators build both their audiences and their businesses, rather than relying on other platforms to monetize the attention they generate?
The Growing Cultural Influence of Long-Form Content
To understand why Instagram might be pursuing this direction, we need to look at the growing significance of long-form content, particularly podcasts.
Over the past several years, podcasts have evolved from what was largely an audio-driven medium into an increasingly influential component of the wider digital media landscape.
Today, podcasters distribute their content across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and other platforms, frequently using short-form clips on social media to attract audiences to their full-length conversations.
The scale is remarkable. According to industry estimates cited by Search Engine Land, the global podcast audience is projected to reach approximately 619 million listeners in 2026, across platforms, compared with around 584 million in 2025.
While this does not mean that all these listeners consume video podcasts, the figures demonstrate the considerable reach of podcasting as a medium.
And what makes this development particularly significant is not simply the size of the audience, but the growing role of long-form content in shaping public discourse, influencing perceptions, and establishing deeper connections between creators and their audiences.
Consider, for example, the role podcasts played during the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Donald Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), one of the world’s most prominent podcasts, attracted considerable attention. The nearly three-hour conversation provided Trump with an opportunity to speak at length, discuss a wide range of issues, and engage with audiences in a format considerably different from a conventional television interview.
Trump also appeared on several other podcasts, including Theo Von’s This Past Weekend, as part of a wider campaign strategy that incorporated alternative media channels to reach audiences beyond traditional news outlets.
Interestingly, following the election, Rogan recounted that Trump had personally credited him with helping secure his victory.
Now, this does not establish that Rogan’s podcast determined the election outcome. Electoral behavior is far more complicated than that, and attributing a political victory to a single media appearance would be misleading.
Nevertheless, the anecdote illustrates how prominent these platforms have become in the political and cultural landscape, to the extent that their perceived influence is acknowledged by political figures themselves.
And this was not limited to Republicans.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, a podcast particularly popular among younger female audiences.
The conversation focused on issues including reproductive rights, women’s experiences, and challenges in public life. It also provided an opportunity to engage an audience that might not ordinarily consume conventional political interviews.
The two appearances differed considerably in audience composition, conversational style, duration, and strategic purpose.
While Rogan’s audience provided Trump with exposure to a substantial male listenership, Harris’s appearance offered access to a predominantly female audience through a platform associated with conversations about relationships, identity, and women’s experiences.
It would be difficult to establish which appearance had a greater effect on voting behavior. What matters here is that both campaigns recognized the value of reaching audiences through personalities they already followed and trusted, in settings that allowed for conversations beyond traditional political sound bites.
This raises several interesting questions about the relationship between the interviewer’s approach, the guest’s communication style, and the audience’s existing perceptions.
How much does the interviewer’s demeanor influence the way audiences interpret a conversation? Does a less conventional interview setting make a public figure appear more relatable? And to what extent does the length of a discussion provide audiences with a more comprehensive understanding of the individual involved?
A lengthy interview does not automatically change someone’s opinion. However, it can offer considerably more material through which audiences assess a public figure’s personality, credibility, and positions.
And this influence is not confined to politics.
Take Lex Fridman, whose podcast regularly features extensive conversations with leading figures in technology, artificial intelligence, science, and philosophy.
His guests have included Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, alongside prominent researchers, philosophers, and other thinkers.
These conversations frequently explore subjects that would be difficult to examine meaningfully in a conventional short-form video, including artificial intelligence, scientific development, ethics, and the implications of technological change.
They demonstrate how long-form content can contribute to public discourse, giving audiences opportunities to engage with ideas in greater depth and allowing the individuals involved to communicate beyond headlines and brief quotations.
Of course, longer conversations are not inherently more informative, credible, or accurate. Much still depends on the participants, the questions asked, and whether important claims are adequately challenged.
But the broader point remains: long-form content has become an important vehicle for shaping public perception, influencing conversations, and establishing relationships between creators and their audiences.
Why Instagram’s Latest Experiment Could Be Different
Interestingly, this is not Instagram’s first attempt to embrace longer videos.
The company launched IGTV in 2018, before eventually discontinuing its standalone application in 2022 as it shifted its video strategy toward Reels.
So what makes the latest experiment different?
One important distinction is the connection Instagram is attempting to establish between different content formats.
Alongside Features, Instagram is testing Clips as Reels, allowing creators to link shorter clips directly to longer videos. It is also developing ways to organize episodic content and expanding its video experience to television screens.
This could fundamentally change how audiences move between formats.
Imagine discovering an interesting comment from an hour-long interview through a 30-second Reel. Rather than having to leave Instagram, search for the full conversation on YouTube, and resume watching there, audiences could access the longer discussion within the same platform.
From a business perspective, this is significant.
Short-form content excels at generating discovery and encouraging frequent interactions. Long-form content, meanwhile, can provide opportunities for sustained viewing, more extensive storytelling, and deeper audience engagement.
By connecting the two, Instagram could potentially capture different stages of the audience journey, from initial discovery to sustained consumption.
In other words, rather than viewing short-form and long-form content as competing formats, Instagram appears to be exploring how one can reinforce the other.
There are, however, important challenges.
For one, the 90-minute limit would not accommodate many podcast episodes in their entirety, particularly programs such as The Joe Rogan Experience, whose conversations frequently exceed two hours.
One potential next step would be for Instagram to adopt an approach similar to Elon Musk’s X by allowing creators to upload videos lasting several hours. However, such a shift would be a double-edged sword. Instagram has built much of its appeal around fast-paced, real-time, and bite-sized content, and a greater emphasis on lengthy videos could challenge established audience preferences and platform dynamics. At the same time, longer formats could create opportunities for more substantive engagement, particularly in industries and markets where audiences value detailed discussions, educational content, or extended storytelling. Beyond engagement, greater content flexibility could also strengthen creator monetization and retention, giving creators more reasons to invest in Instagram rather than distributing their most substantial content elsewhere.
The more fundamental challenge, however, is whether Instagram can develop discovery tools, viewing experiences, and creator incentives sufficiently compelling to compete with YouTube’s established ecosystem.
After all, expanding video length alone would not guarantee stronger engagement, greater revenue, or more satisfied creators.
Ultimately, the success of this experiment will depend not only on whether people are willing to watch longer videos on Instagram, but also on whether creators see sufficient value in producing and distributing them there.
What Does This Mean for Brands, Governments, and Communicators?
Beyond Instagram and the creator economy, this development could have wider implications for businesses, governments, institutions, and public figures.
Long-form content provides opportunities to communicate complex ideas, explain policies, discuss challenges, establish thought leadership, and engage audiences beyond the limitations of shorter formats.
However, the implications are not limited to the original conversations themselves.
A single statement from a two-hour interview can be extracted, edited into a short clip, and distributed across multiple platforms, potentially reaching millions of people who may never watch the full discussion.
Depending on how that clip is presented and interpreted, its impact on public perception may differ considerably from the original conversation.
This creates both opportunities and challenges for communicators.
On one hand, important messages can reach audiences far beyond the original program. On the other, statements can circulate without their full context, while inaccurate or misleading claims can gain additional exposure.
It also demonstrates why measuring digital communications solely through views, impressions, or engagement figures is no longer sufficient.
A video generating considerable attention does not necessarily mean that its messages are understood, accepted, or influencing perceptions in the way its creators intended.
And this is precisely why sophisticated media monitoring and communications analysis matter.
As social media platforms continue to integrate different content formats, the relationship between visibility, engagement, influence, and perception becomes increasingly important.
For organizations, the challenge will be not only to understand what audiences are watching, but also why particular conversations resonate, how they spread, and what influence they may have over time.
Ultimately, Instagram’s latest experiment is about much more than allowing creators to upload 90-minute videos.
It reflects a broader transformation in how digital platforms compete for audience attention, creator loyalty, and cultural relevance.
For years, the competition has largely revolved around capturing attention as quickly and frequently as possible. Now, platforms are increasingly exploring how to sustain that attention for longer.
And perhaps that is the most interesting aspect of Instagram’s latest move: in a digital environment built around making everything shorter, the next major opportunity might lie in giving audiences a reason to stay longer.
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