Instagram will show users how many times their videos are viewed

Since its inception, Instagram has primarily been about sharing photos (filtered or not) as a way of sharing moments and experiences and trips and food. But over the past several months, the service has begun to put more stock in video, a feature that’s getting more love in an update over the next few weeks.

Going forward, Instagram videos will show a view count instead of likes. (You can still see likes, you just have to tap on views, which will bring you to another screen with a video’s full stats.) The move is a way for Instagram to show users whether or not people are actually engaging with their videos, or simply scrolling past. Like its parent company Facebook, a video view is counted after 3 seconds.

Instagram is now home to over 400 million active users, which is a lot of eyeballs. And with the service giving advertisers exclusive dibs on one minutes video slots, it was only a matter of time before Instagram instituted some sort of view count. Since launching two years ago, video views on Instagram have apparently jumped 40 percent.

The news comes a few days after Instagram introduced the ability to easily manage multiple accounts.

A video posted by TechnoBuffalo (@technobuffalo) on Jan 15, 2016 at 4:23pm PST