Instagram is reportedly considering a longer view of its short videos.

The Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing app is readying a new feature that will let users post long-form video, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The new feature will allow videos of up to an hour in length, as opposed to the current max length of one minute, and will focus on vertical video, people described as familiar with the company's plans told the newspaper.

The audience for original digital video has been rising steadily in the past five years. Among US adults it's grown from 45 million in 2013 to 72 million in 2018, a 60 percent increase, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Instagram has had conversations in recent weeks with content creators and publishers about producing long-form video for the platform, the Journal reported. The feature, if it launches, will do so within the Instagram app, one source said.

Founded in 2010 by Stanford University graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram has grown from a photo-sharing service into a popular photo app used by more than 800 million people.

Facebook, which bought Instagram for $1 billion five years ago, has been busy integrating features made popular by Snapchat into the app, and those efforts have paid off. The social-networking giant said in November it counted 300 million daily active users using Instagram Stories, which lets people publish a series of photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.

Video has been crucial for Facebook as the social network tries to get people to spend more time on its site. In 2016, the company added a video tab to the Facebook app, where people can find new video content.

Facebook has also made a big push in Facebook Live, a feature that lets people broadcast themselves live over the internet and directly onto the social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees the format as the future of his company and has said we're entering a "golden age for live video."

Instagram declined to comment.

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