The popular app Instagram just murdered the new emrging app Vine, by announcing yesterday that they’ve now added a short 15 second video feature to the already popular photo app.
Vine recently emerged as an app that allows you to share short 6 second videos with your followers. However now that Instagram has added video to their app, it now makes people ask “what the hell do I need Vine for anyway?!”
ABC’s Nightline researched how users will now hit the camera button and get a choice of a still camera or video camera option. Selecting the video option will bring up the usual viewfinder, and then, similar to Twitter’s Vine app, holding down the video icon will capture video. Releasing it will allow you to pause the video, readjust your shot and then start capturing again.
Then comes the part that has made Instagram so popular with more than 130 million people: the filters.
“We put the power of a photography studio in the palm of your hand. We’ve done the same for video. So now you can take beautiful video and basically share it with the world,” Systrom said.
There are 13 new video filters, which range from your usual black-and-white effect to others that brighten or blur videos. You can add filters during the playback of your video and switch between them to decide which one you want to select before sharing it. You can also select a frame from the video, which will be the cover or photo that appears in the stream.
But there’s also another feature Instagram has added to make sure your mobile video looks good. Called Cinema Mode, the feature stabilizes video to make sure it isn’t shaky. Cinema Mode will only be available for the iPhone, at first.
A Seamless Addition
When video posts appear in the Instagram feed, the videos will begin to play automatically but only when you stop scrolling. The auto play feature can also be disabled in the settings. All videos will play back with sound as well.
The Vine Effect?
All the big questions about how the app will work have been answered, but the big question for many will be: Is this better than Twitter’s Vine, which allows iPhone and Android users to share six-second video clips — and was this addition to a response to it?
Systrom said the company has actually been working on the video feature for more than two years. Before Instagram was created, Systrom and Krieger were working on an app called Burbn that let you share your location and videos and photos of where you were.
“When we decided to work on Instagram, we took the best parts from that project and created Instagram,” he said. “But we left video on the shelf. All we’re doing today is bringing it back into the product.”
Twitter released its standalone Vine app in January and it quickly became one of the most popular apps in Apple’s App Store. Recently, data from Topsy Analystics showed that Vines were being shared more on Twitterthan Instagram photos.
“I think that Vine’s doing a tremendous job with it. There are others, too, whether it’s, you know, Cinemagram or other apps that do video,” Systrom said. “At the end of the day, though, we all do it in slightly different ways.”
Prior to the Instagram event, Vine put up a post teasing new features, including a new draft feature that lets users start working on a video and save it for later.
“Instagram itself has a significant number of users, even when you compare it to Twitter directly. And it’s quite a bit bigger than Vine,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau told ABC News. “In the end, I think people are going to stick with what they know. If they like Instagram and there is a video feature, they will probably use it.”
Sure, that means more informative food and selfies in your feed, but it also means a lot more.
“Instagram not only is about lattes, babies, cute dogs,” said Systrom. “It’s also about these moments in the world that let you peer in to understand different cultures, different political situations.”
Source: ABC