Facebook had such high hopes for Instagram TV or IGTV, but its seems that has now somewhat soured with the company confirming that the IGTV button within the app is being removed.
A Facebook spokesperson has informed and confirmed to TechCrunch that the IGTV icon, located on the top right hand side of the app screen, is being removed due to “very few” actually using the icon – with many people instead choosing to watch IGTV videos through their main feed instead of using the dedicated icon.
The change to remove the icon comes at a time when Facebook, its parent company, had made a number of concessions for IGTV, such as allowing landscape videos instead of insisting on vertical clips, along with the recently enabled option to post IGTV videos directly from the standard app and not just the separate IGTV app.
It’s unclear why users weren’t using the icon but its likely that users just found it easier to find and watch IGTV videos in their own feed rather than trying to look through the dedicated icon half the time. It apparently also came down to many IGTV videos were just too short and most would normally either refer to the users YouTube channel or other YouTube videos relating to similar, if not the same content at the end of the day.
That being said, if you’re a user of the IGTV icon within the main Instagram app, then you might want to download the dedicated separate app — IGTV — from the Google Play store via the link below.
