Frequent Instagrammers will have noticed an infrequent new feature that curates videos on a vertical feed covering special events and occasions. Internally referred to as Spotlight Compilations, these user-generated clips are now being expanded to appear on a daily basis in a separate tab within the “Explore” section.
Whereas in the past, Spotlight Compilations covered notable instances such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, the holiday season, and events such as music festivals — much like Snapchat’s Live Stories — they will now cover a host of regular topics.
Spotlight’s video slideshow format has recently expanded to include the best clips related to themes such as “odd couple animal videos” and “rad skateboarding videos,” reports TechCrunch.
Instagram attributes the feature’s roll-out to its unprecedented popularity. Consequently, the app’s community team has been trawling through the top clips from relevant topics in an effort to provide daily Spotlight content.
“[Spotlight is] where you go to discover things you don’t follow but might end up following. Things you never expected to see,” explained Instagram’s communications manager, Gabe Madway, to TechCrunch.
Madway’s comments reveal the strategy here is to promote both a form of content that is secondary to Instagram (namely, videos) and the users behind the clips. This keeps the top content providers coming back and promotes visual content that may inspire general users to create for the app in new-found ways.
A similar approach can be seen in Instagram’s suite of products, including the likes of the Boomerang GIF app, Layout’s collage maker, and Hyperlapse timelapse videos, which allow Instagrammers to keep things fresh.
The trend toward curation has seen social networks such as Snapchat and Twitter introduce similar features. Launched last year, Twitter Moments groups together tweets from a specific event to allow new users to access information more easily.
