Is IGTV dead? I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone going on about it in the media, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone I care about posting anything on it. Maybe I have amnesia or I am reading the wrong sources, but damn son, it really feels like Instagram has just put that out there and then just kinda let it die.

Well, is it dead?

A quick google suggests that I am not the only person who thinks that, which is a shame, I actually made a few videos for IGTV when it first came out and wrote a few things, I kinda felt like I didn’t have to keep the standard as high as if I were doing a YouTube video, I mean, it was only going to be a three minute odd blast and probably filmed and edited on my phone, not the memory card, rendering out, transition cutting, audio syncing headache that a YouTube video might be. The problem was, that even for me, the effort in creating the videos was not worth it. I mean, I did still edit them, even if it was on my phone, and then… like 8 people watched them, whats the point. I could make a video of a black piece of paper, upload it to youtube with nothing but a title and it would get more than 8 people looking at it!

If that is the case for me, then I can’t imagine any social media ‘influencer’ with a bunch of content hungry followers is going to want to bother making a non-transferable (or probably cramped re-edit) of their content for the six people who are going to view it on IGTV, especially when those same six people probably already saw it on YouTube!?

Discovery, its still the problem…

I mentioned before that I think IGTV’s biggest probelm is discovery, I mean, there just isn’t any, not that I can see, I just get random vidoes or the same stuff from the same people I follow, which isn’t really what I do on YouTube, I mean, yes, I do watch videos of people I sub to on YouTube, but I would also say that I spend ages in the search looking for answers about questions, guides and reviews of stuff that I’m contemplating buying, you can’t do that on IGTV, or if you can, I haven’t found it (which wouldn’t be surprising as I don’t think I have opened the IGTV app up in over a month).

Missed the boat?

It’s kinda sad, did they miss out on the goodwill and desire for a new platform that there seemed to be when IGTV launched like 3 months ago or whenever it was? It will be hard to get most people to take a second look imo, I mean, maybe less so because they can just nag you to look at it in the instagram app, but that might be a risk that’s not worth taking if it annoyed already happy instagram users. It’s really weird, I can put little to no effort into a story and people will watch it, yet IGTV, nobody cares, its like when not stealing and improving features from SnapChat, Instagram doesn’t seem to be able to innovate new features for themselves. I can’t imagine the recent ‘disturbance in the force’ that they have had there with their founders leaving that IGTV is probably not the focus of their efforts right now, not really surprising as there must only be about 3 people accidentally opening the app on a daily basis these days.

Do you still use IGTV? Do you have any thoughts on it? Can we all now agree that vertical video really isn’t a thing and that people should stop flogging that dead horse now? Let me know on Twitter.