Amazon Prime Video update will divide audiences – depending on your content tastes
Have you noticed something new with the Prime Video app?
Quick Summary
Amazon is rolling out an update for its mobile app – on iPhone and Android – that adds vertical video clips for popular shows.
First arriving in the US, there are plans to expand the rollout to include other countries soon.
Vertical video is the hottest trend in streaming today, with the likes of Disney+ and Netflix jumping on board the bandwagon. Now another service has seen the potential in the TikTok style form factor, having added it in its latest update.
Appearing in a new Clips rail, the vertical snippets give you a glimpse of some of the content available on Prime Video, in order to help you choose your next binge.
It first launched with highlights from NBA games during the last season, but has now expanded further, to include shows and movies. They appear on your homepage and are perfectly suited to the mobile app – on iPhone and Android.
They also match the latest design that rolled out to all users of Prime Video, including those in other countries. This uses vertical imagery too, to allow more library content to be seen on the same screen.
US users can see the Clips rail by scrolling down the homepage. You can then tap on a clip to enter a personalised menu screen with additional vertical video. And you can access the full show or film directly from a clip, too.
Sharing is also possible, with a dedicated share button allowing you to post it to a social feed or email a link to friends and family.
At present, clips are solely of Prime Video shows and movies, although there's the possibility of dedicated vertical video content in future. The same is true with Netflix, which also now has a Clips menu.
With Netflix also investing heavily in podcasts for the future, we can see TikTok-like videos also appearing on the platform in the future. The same is true with Disney+.
Ironically, while YouTube is doubling down on horizontal videos and the TV experience (more now watch on TV than mobile), the streaming services seem to want to expand in the opposite direction.
How you feel about that will mainly come down to how you watch shows. My teenage daughter and her friends barely even watch on a television screen anymore, so there's an ever-growing market for this sort of thing.
