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Shutterstock/Linda Moon

Instagram has just made a small but important change to how it works

And it involves endless looping.

INSTAGRAM HAS UPDATED its app so that videos played on it will automatically replay in your feed instead of stopping.

The latest update will see clips, which play automatically and can be as long as 15-seconds, play again after they finished, similar to Vine. Yet while Vine’s videos were designed to loop when it was first launched, Instagram wasn’t.

Users do have the option of preloading videos on WiFi as a way to save data, although there’s no way to stop them from playing automatically when you’re in the app.

The change is likely a way to appeal to businesses interested in using video to advertise. Instagram has slowly rolled out video and image ads from brands and companies spending six months testing out video ads before it made them official.

It first introduced video ads to US users back in October with companies like Disney and Activision advertising Big Hero 6 and Call of Duty with 15-second clips. Users in other countries like Canada and Australia have also seen video ads appearing in their feed.

During Facebook’s earnings call last week, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, revealed that more than 70% of Instagram’s 300 million monthly active users are based outside of the US.

Read: Tired of Facebook videos? Too bad >

Read: Would you pay for an undo button on Tinder? >

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Author
Quinton O'Reilly
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