Instagram wants to make sure you see and watch all the videos in your feed. The Facebook-owned video and photo-sharing application now auto-loops videos that appear in users’ feeds.
Instagram updated its app on February 3, 2015 to include the continually-replaying video feature, and it is strikingly similar to the way videos play on the Twitter-owned Vine app. According to VentureBeat, the app’s mobile users won’t be able to pause video playback, as they can on Vine. Instead, they must scroll past the video entirely. Instagram noted the auto-looping videos won’t eat up extra data for users on mobile devices.
However, Instagram’s mobile users can still choose to mute the clip’s sound, which automatically plays as the clip does. And users who view Instagram videos via the web will be able to pause those clips as they would a normal YouTube or Vine video.
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While Instagram is still arguably more well-known for its photo sharing abilities, marketers should be happy to see the auto-looping videos. Instagram started running video ads in late 2014, bringing brands like Disney, CW, and Activision on board. The auto-loop feature means Instagram users won’t be able to miss these and other marketers’ video ads.
Instagram was recently valued at over $35 billion by Citi analyst Mark May. The video and photo sharing app boasted 300 million active, global monthly users as of December 2014.
