Promising, But Lacks Intuitive UI and Community That Encourages New Creators – IGTV from Instagram Review

I very much want to see a Facebook product put a chip in YouTube’s monopoly, and I think that after a few tries, IGTV might have a chance. The beauty of vertical video is it’s going to be nightmarishly hard for the corporate creators that took over YouTube to reformat practically. The problem with IGTV is that it aspires to compete with YouTube by acting like Snapchat. For starters is one of the problems that makes Snapchat impractical for most content creators, and a problem that’s all too familiar to Facebook products, and it’s something that despite it’s simplicity, only YouTube ever gets right. There’s no search feature. IGTV relies entirely on auto play based on what it thinks you’ll like, and its search engine only navigates usernames. This makes it next to impossible to find niche content, as there’s almost no way that Instagram will auto play exactly what you’re looking for based off of popular users and people you follow. Another issue parallels Snapchat’s explore page. Users with millions of IG followers are pushed like crazy by the system. I don’t want to watch 10 minute workout programs made by vegan Californians. IGTV wants me to. An irrelevant ad can be forgiven, but when an app’s primary content is irrelevant to its consumer, that spells trouble for the service itself. I trust that Instagram will be reading these reviews and fixing these issues shortly, and IGTV is promising for being a week old, but if Instagram doesn’t want to lose traction it needs to offer monetization for creators, a way to access specific content and an opportunity for the little guy to grow a fan base. Until it fixes these, it’s doomed.
Review by RevBran on IGTV from Instagram.