Brace yourself! Instagram now has 90-second reels

In an effort to make the experience of making reels better for content creators on the platform, Instagram has added a new set of features and has also extended the time limit of short video-recording from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.

Instagram explained in its announcement that reels help Instagrammers get more followers on the platform and pointed out that over a 60-day period, “public accounts with over 10K followers that posted at least five reels over 60 days gained over 2.5x as many followers as those within the same category who didn't post reels”.

And to guide users towards taking their first steps towards making reels, or helping them improve their current game, Instagram shared the new features it has added. These include fresh sound effects, the option to import your own audio, interactive stickers, more templates, and of course, increased reel length time.

Instagram said in its blog post that sound effects like air horns, crickets, drums, etc have been added to its collection of sound effects to help enhance your content on reels and allow the audience to feel the right emotions while they watch it.

In case you find this collection wanting, Instagram is now allowing you to import your own audio directly within the reel. “Use the import audio feature to add commentary or background noise from any video that's at least five seconds long on your camera roll. Make sure that you like how your voice sounds in the recording because others might use it in their reels, too!” Instagram explained.

Next on the list of new features are interactive stickers, some of which you would have already seen/used on Instagram Stories. These stickers offer more opportunities to engage with your audience and include Polls for two-part reels, Quiz, Emoji slider, etc.

The Templates feature will help you create a reel using another reel as a template. “It pre-loads the audio and clip placeholders, so all you have to do is add and trim your unique clips,” Instagram explained in the blog.

Finally, giving you more time on reels, Instagram has extended the time limit to 90 seconds giving you more scope to play around and express. “You'll have more time to share more about yourself, film extra behind-the-scenes clips, dig deeper into the nuances of your content or whatever else you want to do with that extra time,” the platform said.

A time extension of this sort makes sense because Instagram is hoping to bring in more users who used to use TikTok in India and are possibly using other platforms now that allow for longer content. With ByteDance in talks to renter the country, it is possible that TikTok might be back to - making this move of increasing time-limit to 90 seconds for reels all the more important in the current scenario.

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