Instagram Removes IGTV Button From App Home Screen

Instagram has dropped the IGTV icon from the home screen of the app because not many users were using it. The standalone IGTV app was launched by the company in June 2018. The decision to remove the IGTV button from the main app is being seen as an acknowledgement of the poor reception of the feature. The company told TechCrunch that most people are finding IGTV content through previews in Feed, the IGTV channel in Explore, creators'' profiles, and the standalone IGTV app. Hence, the separate icon on the top right corner of the home screen has been removed.

According to TechCrunch, IGTV app has been downloaded by 7 million of more than 1 billion Instagram users. In comparison, TikTok was downloaded 1.15 billion times globally.

“One thing still missing is an open way for Instagram creators to earn money directly from their IGTV videos. Users can't get an ad revenue share like with YouTube or Facebook Watch,” wrote TechCrunch.

“When the lack of monetization is combined with less than stellar view counts compared to YouTube and TikTok, it's understandable why some creators might be hesitant to dedicate time to IGTV,” it added.

To enable more users to easily post long-form videos, Instagram also added a new feature that allows users to post IGTV videos right from the main app's IGTV feed video uploader.

Separately, the Facebook-owned company earlier this month introduced three new options to share Boomerang Stories: SlowMo, Echo, and Duo, along with a new few feature to trim their length. The new filters are available in the Boomerang composer located in the Instagram Stories camera.