Instagram is testing 60-second stories

Instagram is testing 60-second videos in its stories. This should appeal to many designers.

Instagram is a platform that offers a fairly limited number of features for posting short content to its community. However, as with Twitter, delivering the perfect experience to users is not easy. It takes many iterations to achieve this and it goes through many tests. Today, Instagram is testing an increase in the maximum length of stories to 60 seconds.

Instagram is testing 60-second videos in its stories

Instagram stories are currently limited, and thankfully finally. Each story you post cannot be longer than 15 seconds. Obviously you can post 10, which would make the final video 150 seconds long, but skipping between each story can be problematic if you want to tell something long enough.

That being said, it looks like the platform is testing its stories for a longer duration right now. 60 is more accurate. At least that’s what we learned from a tweet by Matt Navarra who shared a screenshot with @yousufortaccom in Turkey that got the change notification.

This should appeal to many designers.

Instagram already allows creators to post longer content via IGTV, and creators usually post a link in their stories for their followers to view that content. However, by allowing longer videos to be posted to stories, the experience should be more enjoyable for users who no longer have to navigate from one section of the app to another.

Also keep in mind that not all users are seeing this change in video length yet, which suggests that since Instagram hasn’t officially communicated on the matter, it’s meant for testing. If all goes well, there is no doubt that the platform will open it up to more users. Until then, if you want to post longer stories on Instagram, you need to crop your videos.