The feed collects videos from across Instagram’s community into a new viewing experience. As users scroll through the Explore grid, they should also encounter “Featured” channels filled with videos on specific topics.

Explore will still work the same way by showing content to users posted by people with whom they have no official connection.

On Instagram, users “like” still pictures a lot more than videos, but comments represent a deeper level of engagement than likes, the video marketing firm finds.

“After investing the time to consume longer content, people are more motivated to engage,” John Baker, chief data scientist at Boston-based Pixability, recently told Social Media & Marketing Daily.

“We've seen this on YouTube, with longer-form content generating higher engagement rates on average compared to 30-second videos,” Baker tells me.

Unlike YouTube, however, more passive audiences are still a relatively new phenomenon for Instagram. Near-continuous scrolling has historically been standard practice for most users.

In other words, Instagram is changing its user experience by adding more video to the mix. To that end, the Facebook unit just announced plans to expand stream limits to 60 seconds.

For the time being, the new Explore feature will only be available to users located with the United States.