The rumours were true, Facebook announced today that it is adding video to Instagram. Its excuse for adding moving images? It’s not Vine envy, apparently.
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Instead, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, said that Instagram isn’t just about pictures, it’s always been about “visual imagery”, but that the world wasn’t ready for a fast, simple and beautiful video experience on mobile. Taking a page out of the Steve Jobs keynote book, Systrom said that video on Instagram is “video done right on mobile.”
At first glance, Instagram’s offering doesn’t appear much different from Vine’s. You take short 15 second clips that are triggered by pressing and releasing the new video icon, and you can (more intuitively) delete individual clips. Of course, it being Instagram, there are 13 new filters that you can try out in real time and instead of an automated preview frame, you can select a pretty one for your friends’ feeds. Oh, and clips only play once, they don’t loop — erm, take that Vine?
Systrom saved the best for last however. Instagram might actually come through on its mission do for video, what it did for photography: flatter the casual videographer. How? It introduced mind-blowing software-based cinematic stabilisation. The feature is called “Cinema”, and it’s a product of a collaboration with a bunch of clever industry people. If it works as advertised, it could as Systrom touted: “change everything” for the casual video taker.
Finally, some stats. 16 billion photos are now shared on Instagram and they get liked 1 billion times every day. Instagram now boasts 130 million users — that’s 110 million more than when it was acquired by Facebook,
Instagram’s video feature is available on both Android and iOS.
