Instagram adds long-form video with new Features section

What happened

Instagram is introducing long-form video to its platform, reversing a position its leadership had held for several years. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri and vice president of products Tessa Lyons announced in a video that a dedicated long-form section, called "Features", will launch in the coming weeks, according to reporting by The National.

The move departs from the platform's approach since Reels, its short-form vertical video format, arrived as a response to TikTok. Meta had generally prioritised clips under 90 seconds, on the basis that users preferred shorter content. Lyons said the Instagram team had reviewed data indicating that users were interested in longer videos, and that the company wanted to serve a wider range of creative formats and storytelling styles.

The announcement frames the change around creators, who are being offered more room to develop stories within audiences they have already built on the platform.

Why it matters

For a platform, the central question has always been what format earns attention and keeps people returning. This change suggests that the answer is no longer a single format. When a product team that has built its strategy around brevity revises that position on the strength of its own usage data, it signals that viewing preferences are more varied and more context-dependent than a single product rule can capture.

For organisations that serve customers through digital channels, the lesson is about the discipline behind the decision. Instagram's shift shows the value of treating a standing product principle as a hypothesis to be tested against behaviour, rather than a settled truth. It also shows how quickly a dominant design assumption can become a constraint on the experience people actually want.

By the numbers

• 90 seconds is the length threshold Meta had prioritised for Reels-era video before this change.
• 26 October 2026 is the date The National published its report on the announcement.

The Renascence take

Most coverage will treat this as a feature launch. The more useful reading is that a platform has admitted its own product rule was an average that hid meaningful variation in what people want to watch, and it has corrected course using behavioural evidence rather than opinion.

The principle underneath is that format preferences are contextual, not fixed. A platform that optimises for one length of content is making a bet about its audience, and that bet should be revisited as the audience changes. Operators should ask which of their own rules are based on current evidence and which are inherited habits. The practical step is to segment behaviour by intent and creator type, test alternative formats with real users, and let the data overturn a principle when it no longer holds.