“Who invented vertical video?” deserves an honest answer: nobody. There is a habit, holding your phone upright, and there are apps that, one after another, decided the habit deserved a screen. We dated each step with the source that gives it. Pages read on 15 October 2026. Where a date rests only on press coverage or on Wikipedia, we say so.
Before 2013: a filming mistake
A phone is held upright to call, read and type. Taking it out to film, people often keep it in the same position, and the video, seen on a horizontal screen, leaves empty space on each side.
On 5 June 2012 a comedy video by the puppets of Glove and Boots turned this into an imaginary medical condition: “Vertical Video Syndrome”, presented as a public service announcement. It captures the mood of the time: video is horizontal, and vertical is an error.
2013 to 2016: apps turn the screen over
October 2013, Snapchat Stories. On 3 October 2013 Snapchat launched Stories, strings of Snaps that stay up for 24 hours. Marketing press later credited Snapchat with betting early on the vertical frame; we come back to this in Why vertical video works.
March 2015, Periscope. Twitter launched Periscope on 26 March 2015. Landscape broadcasting was added on 10 September 2015. The app closed in March 2021.
2015, vertical becomes acceptable. By then the press was noting that vertical video, mocked in 2012, had become widely accepted in apps such as Snapchat and Periscope, where videos are more disposable.
August 2016, Instagram Stories. On 2 August 2016 Instagram launched Stories, photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours. The press saw a copy of Snapchat.
2014 to 2018: short video takes the feed
musical.ly, 2014. The app, founded in Shanghai by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, came out in August 2014, after a prototype in April, for lip-sync clips of 15 seconds to a minute. Wikipedia does not say they were vertical, and neither do we.
June 2018, IGTV. Instagram introduced IGTV on 20 June 2018, an app for longer vertical videos. Instagram changed course: IGTV accepted landscape video from 23 May 2019, and in February 2022 Instagram announced it would close in March to focus on video in the main app, Reels included.
TikTok, 2016 to 2018. ByteDance launched Douyin in China on 20 September 2016, then an international version, TikTok, in September 2017. It bought musical.ly in November 2017, and the two apps merged on 2 August 2018.
2019 to 2025: everyone copies the feed
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 2019 | Instagram tests Reels in Brazil, under the name Cenas |
| 5 August 2020 | Reels launch in more than 50 countries |
| September 2020 | YouTube Shorts beta in India, then the US in March 2021 |
| 23 November 2020 | Snapchat introduces Spotlight |
| September 2021 | Facebook Reels in the US, then more than 150 countries in February 2022 |
| Late March 2024 | LinkedIn confirms it is testing a vertical feed |
| 4 February 2025 | According to the press, vertical videos also display full screen on computers |
Reels, Shorts and Spotlight arrived within weeks of each other, between August and November 2020. The press of the time presented them as answers to TikTok.
Where “who invented it?” has no answer
- The habit has no inventor: it comes from how people hold a phone.
- The full-screen, swipe-through format has several parents. Snapchat’s Stories made it common, Instagram’s made it universal, TikTok turned it into a feed in its own right.
- Stories have a date, 2013 for Snapchat and 2016 for Instagram, which copied them.
- 9:16 is a television picture turned a quarter turn, as described in The 9:16 vertical video format. No company invented it.
“TikTok invented vertical video” is wrong; so is “Snapchat invented it”. Each added a piece.
Why it is worth knowing
Because the format is not a platform fad: in ten years it became the way a large share of video is watched. Why it works is the subject of Why vertical video works.
Dailies Studio makes vertical shorts from the calls you record, in French or in English, and publishes them where your audience watches this format.
Key takeaways
- Nobody invented vertical video: a joke in 2012, then a habit in apps between 2013 and 2016.
- Snapchat (2013), Periscope (2015) and Instagram Stories (2016) made it common; TikTok made it a feed.
- Reels, Spotlight and Shorts arrived in 2020, and LinkedIn began testing its own in 2024.
- IGTV (2018) added landscape in 2019, then closed in 2022.
Sources
Pages read on 15 October 2026.
- SFist, “Vertical Video Syndrome”, 5 June 2012.
- Engadget, Snapchat Stories, 3 October 2013.
- Wikipedia: Periscope, Musical.ly, IGTV, TikTok, which cite the press of the time.
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, vertical phone video no longer a faux pas, 3 April 2015.
- CNBC, Instagram Stories, 2 August 2016.
- TechCrunch, Reels launch, 5 August 2020; Facebook Reels, 22 February 2022.
- Digital Music News, YouTube Shorts in India, 15 September 2020; Snap, Spotlight, 23 November 2020.
- Engadget, LinkedIn tests a vertical feed, 29 March 2024; Woo.paris, LinkedIn and vertical videos, 5 February 2025; LinkedIn, vertical video.