Instagram Introduces 3-Minute Reels and Friend Reel Activity Feature

Instagram has announced significant updates to its platform, including the extension of Reels video length to three minutes and a new feature that allows friends to see reels that you’ve liked. These changes bring the Reels feature in closer competition with platforms like TikTok or the Shorts segment of YouTube, giving users more video time to work with and enabling reels to spread to friends and followers in the algorithm.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained the reasoning behind the longer Reels:

“Historically, it’s only been 90 seconds, and that’s because we’ve wanted to focus Instagram on short-form video, not on long-form video. But we’ve heard a lot of feedback from a lot of you creators out there that 90 seconds is just too short, so we’re hoping that upping that limit up to three minutes will help you tell the stories that you really want to tell.”

In addition to the expanded Reels, Instagram is testing a new engagement feature that displays friends’ activity on Reel posts. A cluster of profile bubbles appears in the top right corner of the Reels playback window, showing images of friends who have liked or commented on a post. While there are some users that worry about this feature exposing private interactions with sensitive or personal reels, this newly-added engagement feature will likely still get future tweaks and improvements to address those concerns.

Like many Instagram updates, it will take time for users to fully adapt to whatever algorithm changes are made as a result of these tweaks. The gentle nudge towards longer video content could help the platform compete more with YouTube Shorts, due to its similar three-minute cap, but it also enables Instagram to host longer videos than the sixty seconds provided by TikTok and similar short-form apps.