Videos posted on Instagram will soon appear with a view counter below them, the Facebook-owned company announced Feb. 11.
The view counter will appear where the number of likes are normally displayed. Users will still be able to see the number of likes on a video by tapping the view counter.
“As a widely expected industry metric for video, we believe video views are the best measure of viewer intent,” reads Instagram’s blog post on the change. “And we often hear from our community they’d like to better understand how people are engaging with their videos.”
This Is What The Internet Looks Like
2003 A visualization of routing paths of the Internet on July 8, 2003, shows how the Internet was predominantly overrun by North America. There was less connectivity in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and the least connectivity in Africa and Latin America.
Here's an example: the center of the large North America starburst towards the top-left corner represents an IP address owned by Verizon Business. The lines link to the IP addresses of Verizon Business users.Barrett Lyon2006 Three years later, on July 8, 2006, there is increased connectivity in Europe, while Internet routing paths are beginning to become more visible in Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
Here's an example: the center of Latin America starburst towards the top-left corner represents UNINET Mexico (Telemex), which is a large Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Mexico.Barrett Lyon2009 By July 8, 2009, large networks of Internet routing paths in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America have become visible. Connectivity in Africa remained relatively low.
Here's an example: the center of the big Asia-Pacific starburst at 4 o'clock represents the China Education and Research Network Center, which is a massive state-funded network universities across the nation.Barrett Lyon2012 As the Internet grows, the center of the map becomes more dense with connections. That's because more users are connecting to more ISPs, which, when mapped, results in more lines.
Here's an example: the center of the Africa starburst at 4 o'clock represents Telecom Egypt (TE Data), an ISP in Egypt that had 1.2 million customers in 2012.Barrett LyonJuly 11, 2015 Strong growth of Latin America networks through the years has resulted in an Internet that is no longer North America-centric.Barrett LyonKorea Telecom, South Korea's largest internet provider, is a small part of the internet, but a closer look shows it is quite extensive.Barrett LyonA closer look at Korea TelecomBarrett LyonAn even closer look at Korea TelecomBarrett LyonThe closest look at Korea Telecom shows the many individual IP addresses that together make up an essential part of the internet.Barrett Lyon
This is likely to be especially valuable for businesses, artists, and personalities who build most of their following on Instagram. Seeing the number of likes and views can give these users a better grasp of which clips resonate more strongly with their followers. Vine, the Twitter-owned video sharing app, has been offering a similar metric called Loop Counts since 2014.
Instagram also said the time people have spent watching video on Instagram has increased by more than 40 percent over the last six months. The company said more updates will be coming soon.
“Adding view counts is the first of many ways you’ll see video on Instagram get better this year,” the company wrote.
