Instagram’s core feature was still photography with filters and it naturally people wanted to upload videos on the platform. When Vine launched and it was a hit, suddenly short videos became like a legitimate thing to pursue in the quest to add more active users and later on Instagram debuted their short 15 second video format complete with filters.
However, unlike the veteran YouTube or the budding Vine or its parent company Facebook, you are not able to see the view count of the video that you posted. YouTube and Facebook use the classic “views” terminology and Vine uses “loops” as a way to display the view count. Now, Instagram has decided to join the foray by announcing that they will show view counts on videos.
From the screenshots, the view counter tab will be below the like, comment and share buttons. Interestingly enough, in order to view the amount of likes the video has, you have to tap on the view count. This is a weird move but it makes sense since the location of the view counter is where the like counter is currently and combining the two was necessary to make the interface clean.
This announcement comes at a time when they launched an original video series which is running for the course of this month. They also have Spotlight compilations which are rather cool curated video content. When it comes to videos, views makes more sense in the visual aspect manner where likes will be delegated to show the overall sentiment of the video. This is cool from Instagram and it will be the network of choice for watching both original and user generated videos in the future.
