Duration

Recently while using Facebook and Instagram I noticed two things. The first is that photos are almost gone. The second is that videos went from being a few seconds each, to a few minutes each. This means that if you open the FB or IG apps and begin to watch a video you’re going to spend more time than you had expected to spend.

To put it another way, Facebook and Instagram have become more like television than web browsing activities. They have become more like radio, or television because they have become hot, rather than cool media. You scroll, and you watch, and you’re asked how many songs you recognise, or you’re getting a history lesson about priest holes in England (Where catholic priests hid under protestant reform) and more.

Recently I looked at Instagram and I noticed that almost all of the “content” is vertical videos. When I look at Facebook and TikTok I notice the same thing. Yesterday I noticed that Bluesky were promoting that they have ten minute videos. I think all of these people have forgotten that we’re using antisocial media to connect with others, not to watch long videos.

Of course, there is a very good reason for allowing longer and longer videos. Ads. If we watch a video that is several minutes long we are likely to stick around during the ad break to see the end of the video. The longer a video is, the more ads we see, and the more committed we are not to skip them, or force quit the app.