Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom confirmed TechVoid’s expectations today by unveiling a feature to share 15-second video clips on the application, with editing ability and 13 design filters, which could offer the company another venue for advertising revenue.
All Instagram users on iOS and Android can use the new video-sharing feature right now- so commence video taking!
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As TechVoid previously reported, news about the video feature leaked on Monday from sources at TechCrunch. The reports seemed like a good bet because it would allow Facebook’s prized acquisition Instagram to compete with video-sharing application Vine, which was acquired by Twitter and has enjoyed booming popularity since it debuted on Android phones.
During the press event today at Facebook headquarters, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom addressed a cadre of reporters about how 130 million monthly users of Instagram have shared 16 billion photos.
“One of the most interesting things about humans is our ability to create tools to remember,” Systrom told the crowd during today’s press event. “What we did to photos, we just did to video.”
Video of the event is available on Instagram’s home page.
The growth of online video sharing could have repercussions for the simple experience that Instagram users have grown to expect as video could add noise, clutter and bandwidth shortage, NPR reports.
Systrom acknowledged the potential limits of video sharing in an interview with The Verge in November.
“Videos are a very difficult medium to be good at, and also a difficult medium to consume quickly,” Systrom told The Verge in November.
———-[OUR ORIGINAL POST June 17]———
Facebook plans to unveil its latest tech trick on Thursday, and the betting line is that the company will give Instagram a video feature, according to TechCrunch’s sources.
If this is true, video on Instagram could give Facebook another way to collect advertising revenue, and could make it easier than ever for people to embarrass themselves online.
Rumors have been flying about what Facebook’s mystery product could be since June 14, when the company invited reporters to attend a press briefing on June 20. The Instagram video rumor lines up with a report three weeks ago by Matthew Keys that Facebook was testing a video-sharing application.
Whatever Facebook has up its sleeve, they tried to keep it off the grid. ABC News reported that its newsroom received an invitation envelope sent via old-timey snail mail on June 14.
“A small team has been working on a big idea,” the invitation reads. “Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.”
Adding video to Instagram would continue what Mashable dubbed “the Vine effect,” referring to Twitter’s purchase in October of the application, which now shares six second videos on social media after being launched on iOS in January. Vine and similar applications meet a growing demand for video sharing on social media, Mashable opined.
Instagram video would also be Facebook’s next step in its escalating social media arms race with Google. Vine launched on Android devices on June 3, and just four days later Twitter shares featuring Vine outpaced Twitter shares featuring Instagram, according to analytics on social media analysis service Topsy.
TechCrunch speculated at first that Facebook had created a new reader feature, because of its addition of hashtags to the social network, which TechVoid reviewed last week.
The upcoming demise of Google Reader will also leave a void in the search market that other Internet companies such as Digg are preparing to fill with RSS tech, InfoMobile reports.
Source: Tech Crunch
[Image courtesy of Flickr user Master OSM 2011(CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]