ICYMI: Instagram's Return to Long-Form Content (Yes, You Read That Right)
See what the VP of Product had to say about the platform's future
[On the Scalable Summit stage: host Kaya Yurieff and Instagram’s VP of Product Tessa Lyons]
Hot take: Maybe the 1-Second Summary section below is a giveaway but I’m loving the Millennial Teams vs Gen Z Teams trend that’s taking over social — give me short and to the point any day. Gen Z’s version comes across as way more authentic than the millennial-themed marketing fluff.
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
Instagram’s VP of Product says she’s thinking about how the platform can best support long-form creators — and to expect changes in the next 1-2 years
Instagram is testing an “AI creator” label
TikTok’s partnership with Issa Rae’s company launched this week, racking up close to 100M views for micro drama
One of TikTok’s highest predicting factors of a first purchase is comments by other users
TikTok’s Head of Creator Marketing says high quality storytelling yields 23x the views and 70x faster follower growth
YouTube announced US creators can now generate royalty-free tracks for their videos
Report: In 2028, brands will spend more to boost creator content on social media than they spend with creators to produce sponsored content
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Instagram Updates
Instagram is testing “AI creator” labels for creators that regularly post Gen AI content. You can opt in or Meta will automatically add whenever they “detect AI tools were used in the creation process.” It’s a limited test but Instagram says it will be expanding the feature in the coming weeks.
Meta published a blog post detailing how AI's helping them identify which users should be categorized as Teen Accounts and removing anyone under 13.
Threads rolled out access to DMs on desktop. An in-app notification says Group Chats are coming soon.
Threads now allows users to add music clips directly to their posts.
Edits announced several updates, including deeper insights, blending photos into a video with a Fuse feature, and a new text preset called GALA.
Spotted: Instagram is testing an option that lets replace the text on someone else’s Reel with your own text.
Spotted: Threads is testing GIF stickers that allows users to animate text.
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok announced a new partnership to extend ad campaigns beyond the app to real-world placements (eg. urban panels, shopping malls and more).
Related TikTok News
📲 YouTube Updates
YouTube announced US-based creators can now generate instrumental tracks within the YouTube Studio Editor — selecting from one of four royalty-free tracks to replace copyrighted music.
A new Google Photos feature will catalog your clothing in a collection — then let you mix and match your wardrobe to style outfits that you can try on virtually. It’s been 31 years but we’re finally getting the closet assistant promised to us by Clueless.
📲 Pinterest Updates
As part of Pinterest’s Q1 2026 earnings call report, the platform revealed people search Pinterest more than 80 billion times a month, half of them commercial in nature. And over 72% of all impressions occur on search surfaces.
📲 Reddit Updates
Reddit published a guide to the platform for small businesses.
📲 OnlyFans Updates
OnlyFans announced the launch of OnlyFans community hubs dedicated to Sports, Comedy and Podcasts in an effort to diversify the content that shows up on the platform.
📲 Spotify Updates
Spotify is testing an AI-powered tool that would let users create podcasts — similar to Google’s NotebookLM — and import it to Spotify to consume later.
📲 Substack Updates
Substack launched its own founder interview series, called Open Tab. The video podcast is hosted by co-founder Hamish McKenzie and Head of New Media Hanne Winarsky and will roll out on YouTube, podcast platforms, and On Substack.
🔑 ONE BIG THING
Inside Scalable Summit: Clues to Instagram’s Future
The first annual Scalable Summit — hosted by Scalable’s Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg — took place Wednesday in Venice. The one-day conference was focused on the business of the creator economy.
There were some creators on hand — Joanne Molinaro, best known as The Korean Vegan, spoke on my panel. Other creator speakers included Amanda McCants and Zach Hirsch). But the crowd was largely a mix of entrepreneurs, operators, investors, founders and tech executives.
Plus, there was a full roster of platform execs, including Twitch’s CEO Dan Clancy, Instagram’s VP of Product, Tessa Lyons, TikTok’s Global Head of Creator Marketing & Community, Marisa Hammonds, YouTube’s Top Creator Partnerships Lead, Michelle Beaver, and Pinterest’s VP of Content Partnerships, Lauren Glaubach.
The tl;dr
The product shift that will affect you: Instagram is thinking about how it can best support long-form creators (!)
The product development approach that had me nodding along: OpenAI uses creators to beta test its new offerings
The storytelling style TikTok wants creators to focus on: high-quality (not necessarily high production value)
The content style every brand should be exploring: Micro dramas (think Issa Rae’s Screen Time, or Reesa Teesa or Sydney Robinson, etc.)
The most surprising thing about Scalable Summit: the amount of VC guys in vests, giving the event a Bay Area business vibe
The term that was used more often than “authenticity”: multiple panelists described AI as an “accelerant”
Overheard
“How do we best serve the creators who do short-form content, but also do long-form content.”
Instagram‘s VP of Product, Tessa Lyons, was dropping breadcrumbs about the future of the app — and it looks a lot like a one-size-fits-all solution: think IGTV meets podcasts meets live meets mini dramas.
You might remember that in December, Instagram launched its Instagram for TV app, featuring short vertical content organized into interest-based channels. But short-form alone isn’t the endgame.
“I don’t think short-form vertical content is going to be enough to succeed on TV,” said Lyons. “What we’re thinking about is, how do we best serve the creators who do short-form content, but also do long-form content.”
Her vision for Instagram one to two years from now: “Instagram will be a unique part of creators’ long form-strategy in addition to their short-form strategy. A piece of that is going to be podcasts, a piece of that is going to be Live, a piece of that is going to be short-form dramas. I think we’re living in an exciting time with these formats and giving creators more ways to tell their stories.”
Lyons also acknowledged that Instagram has made people feel less in control — both everyday users and creators — and that needs to change. The platform’s push toward Recommendations has been great for discovery, but it’s come at a cost. “The loss of control is real, and it’s something we need to fix,” she said.
They’ve tackled this in a couple of ways: first with Trial Reels, which lets creators share content that bypasses their existing followers to reach new audiences, and then with Your Algorithm, a feature that shows people exactly what signals are shaping their feed so they can adjust accordingly.
Both are early steps, but Lyons was candid that there’s much more work ahead. “We need to be a place where creators can find their audiences, where the next generation of voices can break out, and where creators can reliably reach those people — getting that balance right is a large part of my job.”
“What we’re seeing break through the noise is high quality storytelling.”
Marisa Hammonds, Global Head of Creator Marketing & Community at TikTok, pushed back on the format debate. For TikTok, it’s not about long-form versus short-form — it’s about quality. And she had the data to back it up: creators investing in high quality storytelling see 23x the views and 70x faster follower growth compared to other creators.
Her favorite example is Jen Miller, a middle school librarian who built a following around her love of books.
But high quality storytelling doesn’t mean high production budgets. Hammonds said it’s not about fancy equipment or over-produced content. It’s about intentionality: a clear story arc, thoughtful editing, captions for global reach. “Production value does matter,” she said, “but it’s not over indexing to the extreme.”
As for whether TikTok is thinking about a TV app: “I don’t think that is on the roadmap right now,” she said. “Never say never.”
“Brands are going to be the thing that actually saves the micro drama format.”
Ian Schafer, Co-Founder of Ensemble and Hoorae Media with Issa Rae, talked about their partnership with TikTok. It’s the first time the platform has partnered with a media company to launch a vertical micro-drama series. Schafer revealed the newly released 26-episode series, Screen Time, is currently approaching 100M views in the US and Canada.
Micro dramas are really just an evolution of the soap opera, explained Schafer — a story form that got its name because they were sponsored by Procter & Gamble and Ivory Soap back in the 1930s. “The natural equilibrium for the format will be ad supported — whether that’s interstitially, through traditional advertising, through integration, or through ancillary content.”
“In advance of model releases or product releases, we’ll often give early access to groups of creators.”
OpenAI’s Business & Partnerships Lead, David Duxin, talked about a trend that’s gained serious momentum: building products with direct creator input. Social platforms have long understood the value of creator feedback in product development — but hearing this from an AI company carries a different weight, given the tension between AI and the creator industry.”
“About a year ago, we released our first image generator, which was a really fun consumer moment, and really showed the world that these models could really help with creative processes.” said Duxin. “We got a lot of feedback from creators who said, ‘This is amazing. There’s the kernel of something really great here, but we want more control. We want to be able to edit the aspect ratio,’ or ‘The text is kind of weird,’ or ‘It needs to look a little bit more realistic.’”
“Fast forward to about a month ago. We released our second imaging model, and it’s a much more intelligent image model. You can do any aspect ratio you want. It’s really good at directly editing text. It’s really good at preserving likeness and photorealism. And so in advance of that launch, we gave several creators early access. And again, we got really good feedback of how this was useful to them.”
[Scaling Social Commerce panel, left to right: Pinterest’s Lauren Glaubach, ICYMI’s Lia Haberman, Teachable’s Olivia Owens and the Korean Vegan’s Joanne Molinari]
“Buying has never been easier, but deciding has never been harder.”
Lauren Glaubach, VP of Content Partnerships at Pinterest, opened our Scaling Social Commerce panel with a stat that reframed the entire conversation: 70% of Gen Z shoppers who regularly buy on social say they’ve felt guilty right after a purchase. Her argument was that the next decade won’t be won by the brands that make buying frictionless — it’ll be won by the ones that help people choose things that actually feel like them.
The power of niche, high-effort, deeply human content was echoed by Joanne Molinaro — creator and founder of The Korean Vegan brand. She sold out her Korean Vegan Beauty skincare products with zero paid marketing, purely through the community she’d built by being vulnerable about her story, including her family’s immigrant experience. That emotional specificity turned followers into buyers.
Olivia Owens, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Teachable, made the case that the same depth of connection unlocks an entirely different monetization path through digital products — putting a premium on smaller, highly engaged audiences who trust your knowledge over online popularity or an obsession with follower-count.
“We’re shifting toward expertise and trust,” Owens told me. “Follower count is a vanity metric, and reach alone is not a strategy. The creators with longevity are building intellectual property: digital products, owned communities, and experiences that live beyond the algorithm.”
👀 ICYMI: JUST THE HEADLINES
VidCon’s new title sponsor is an AI-powered creator monetization platform - TubeFilter
More money going to TikTok and Instagram ads and relatively fewer dollars entering creators' pockets - Business Insider
Target is launching Target Ambassadors, powered by LTK, as new data shows 75% of U.S. shoppers already buy through creator content - Retail Boss
A ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ meme that viewers thought was AI slop was actually made by a human - NBCNews
OOH company OUTFRONT partnered with Creators 4 Mental Health for Mental Health Awareness Month - Outfront
Your personal creative projects now have a collective deadline called Release Day (a collab between CreativeMornings and Creative Quests, powered by Adobe) Release Day
How to build a branded microdrama—the CMO playbook from Marc Jacobs, Crocs and more - AdAge
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ty for the roundup lotsa' takeaways today!