Instagram is rolling out a bunch of changes this weekend that conveniently make it more like TikTok, which now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the law that bans the app if parent company ByteDance doesn't sell it. Those changes include extending Reels to three minutes in length and replacing the long-standing square grid on your profile with a rectangular layout, as Adam Mosseri revealed in a and his Story, respectively. Considering how some users create a certain look for their pages around the square grid, the latter probably won't sit well with everyone.
Not the third thing either: there's now a tab in your Reels feed that shows you videos your friends have liked or added to Notes, Mosseri shared on . Which means, of course, that it's easier for your friends to see what you're up to and interact with, too. Didn't we agree that it was kind of invasive when Instagram was — and later deleted — to the people you follow? In any case, the changes have already begun to roll out. You'll now see a button showing your friends' activity at the top right of the Reels tab, which will take you to the new feed.
Responding to the switch from the square grid on his Stories, Mosserri put it down to aligning with users' posting habits. “I know some of you really like your squares, and square photos are kind of Instagram's legacy, but at this point most uploads — both photos and videos — are vertical in their orientation , so portrait versus landscape or square, and it's a bummer to crop them too much,” he says. “So I know it's a change, I know it's a little painful, but I think it's a transitional pain.” He added, “I think people will be excited in the long run” that their “aggressive cropping” posts don't appear.
Instagram already offered a somewhat TikTok-like view of user profiles under the Reels tab, but the latest move gives photos in the main grid the rectangular treatment as well (only in the grid, they'll expand to the normal size when you click them individually). Extending Reels, Mosseri said in a separate post that while Instagram has long focused on short-form video, “we've heard feedback that it's too short for those who want to share longer stories.” Instagram previously only allowed Reels up to 90 seconds long, though you can do this by sharing a longer video as a non-Reel post.
TikTok, which also started with a focus on short-form, several years ago, and in 2022. If TikTok really shuts down, users will find a new home for that kind of content.
