Kevin Systrom, the CEO of Instagram, took to the stage today to announce video recording for Instagram. We previously speculated that this feature was coming to Facebook or Instagram. This new feature is functions similarly to Vine, the popular video sharing application from Twitter, but with a 15 second limit instead of 6. Videos can be as short as 3 seconds, if desired.
Video on Instagram gives you the ability to take short movies, just by tapping on the screen to begin recording. The company touted that video should be fast and simple and recording video with Instagram definitely is. It works similarly to apps like Vine and Snapchat. After you’re done recording, you can put one of thirteen filters on your video before sharing, something Vine currently lacks. Instagram also announced that image stabilization would be built in for iOS users so shake will be reduced, if not eliminated.
Systrom stressed that Instagram needs to be fast and responsive so it’ll be interesting to see how smooth video in the Instagram feed will be. Currently, Vine struggles loading some of its video clips. One differentiator between the two apps is that Instagram videos won’t loop, unlike Vine’s.
Twitter launched Vine in January, an app that lets you create and share short videos with the rest of the world via its social network. The application was immediately very popular and became one of the most downloaded free apps in the App Store and Google Play. Facebook obviously took notice and now Vine has to compete with Instagram for video sharing dominance.
Facebook is quickly evolving features across all of its apps and services to be more Twitter-like. Yesterday, the company released a feature where you could reply with a photo and last week, the company announced hashtag support, a long requested feature.
The video update to Instagram will launch on both iOS (iPhone 5 and 4S only) and Android today.
[Source: Facebook Newsroom]
