In addition to announcing that its global community has pushed past the 1 billion mark, Instagram this week introduced IGTV, a new app for long-form, vertical video for the social media platform's array of creators.

Instagram is offering IGTV via a stand-alone app an integrated with the flagship Instagram app, enabling users to share videos that are up to an hour long. It will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks on Android and iOS.

“Just like turning on the TV, IGTV starts playing as soon as you open the app,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder and CEO, explained in this blog post, calling IGTV the start of a “new chapter of video on Instagram.”

Users will get instant access to videos from others they are following on Instagram, and can use the swippable interface to connect with more personalized “For You” selections, as well as a curated selection of popular videos and creator “channels” that are offered on IGTV. IGTV users can also like and comment on IGTV videos and send videos directly to other users.

Though IGTV is being viewed by some as a potential YouTube rival, given its focus on its creator community, the new offering’s focus on portrait-mode video and the notion of channels also is a nod of sorts to the approach of Dreams, a startup led by execs late of Google and Instagram that recently relaunched a mobile TV service that features licensed content from partners such as Discovery Communications and Bloomberg that’s been optimized for smartphone screens.

RELATED: Dreams Launches Mobile TV Lineup, Raises $5M

Dreams, a startup focused on TV content for smartphones, said it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by Capital Ventures, and introduced a channel lineup that features content from partners such as Discovery, Bloomberg Media Distribution and BBC Studios.

The new, free Dreams app is available on iOS and Android devices and doesn’t require users to log-in or register.

New York-based Dreams was founded in 2016. It introduced its mobile TV concept, which focuses on the vertical-viewing format and a swipe-based interface, more than a year ago.

RELATED: Dreams Debuts TV Platform for Smartphones

The launch today marks a relaunch of sorts, as Dream has introduced smartphone-focused channels featuring shows and other content from Animal Planet (River Monsters, Too Cute! and Puppy Bowl); Bloomberg; Discovery Channel (Survivorman, Storm Chasers, and Dual Survival); Food Network (Good Eats, Iron Chef America, and Throwdown with Bobby Flay); Geo (long-form nature and animal documentaries licensed from BBC Studios), HGTV (My First Place, Extreme Homes and Tiny House Hunters); Newsflash (live news feeds); Slow (“minimalist,” soothing shots of landscapes, streams and rainfall); VHS (full episodes from TV shows from the ‘80s and ‘90s, including The Joy of Painting, Inspector Gadget, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, and Sonic the Hedgehog).

Also on the initial slate is Wedding Week, a “pop-up” channel that will feature a live stream of the Royal Wedding on May 19 as well as a long-form documentary on the subject).

What Dreams has tried to steer clear of is the notion of pasting a traditional skinny TV into a smartphone format.

“The idea of instant on, mobile TV to your phone with swipeable channels in a simple app has always been our goal,” Tom Bender, CEO and co-founder of Dreams, said in a recent interview.

Bender, formerly of Google and a team focused on new ad formats at DoubleClick, added that Dreams has been investing R&D dollars in the past year to build up technology that delivers content that is optimized for the smartphone’s vertical screen.

Dreams will be pursing an ad-based business model. Shows for its platform have been edited for the vertical screen, as will the ads that will be dynamically served into those linear-style feeds.

Typically, Dreams will program one full episode per day on each library channel.

“It’s clear from the advertisers what they are advertising against,” Bender said.

“We see this as a complement to paid services like Netflix,” added Dreams co-founder Greg Hochmuth, who is late of Instagram and Google.

Dreams’s A round also included participation by NEA, SV Angel, Box Group, Scott Belsky, and Kevin Durant.

More detail about Dreams and its strategy will be featured in the May 21 issue of Broadcasting & Cable.