Facebook's Instagram is now in a better position to compete with the quickly popular 'Vine', introduces new video capabilities.
"Update: Facebook FB -2.01%added video for Instagram to compete with the fast-growing Twitter app Vine. Instagram’s Kevin Systrom said video clips on Instagram will be 3 to 15 seconds long and include new shaky hand video stabilization technology called Cinema. Instagram now has 130 million users. See the live-blog below:
We’re here at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., where the social network is expected to add video functionality for Instagram. We’re live-blogging the event.
Facebook acquired popular photo-sharing app Instagram in April 2012 for $715 million, just before Facebook went public. (It was initially valued at $1 billion when the deal was announced.) Instagram now has more than 100 million users.
Adding video to Instagram, as multiple reports have suggested, would be a direct move in competition with rival Twitter. Twitter itself had been interested in Instagram before Facebook acquired it. Twitter acquired Vine last October and it launched in January. It’s been a success so far, gaining 13 million users.
Reporters are here at Facebook’s coffee-themed event drinking Blue Bottle coffee waiting for the event to start. The event is expected to start at 10am PST. You can watch it live here.
- Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage. “There are lots of different types of content people want to share.” He’s running through Facebook’s line-up of mobile apps such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and the Pages app for businesses.
- Today we’re going to talk Instagram. When Facebook bought it it had 20 million users and 12 employees. Today it has 100 million. Instagram cofounders: Kevin and Mike are among the most influential people at Facebook now.
- Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom takes the stage. He’s talking big picture. “We’re forever on a quest to record a moment in time… Instagram is a tool to remember…It’s the power of an image that transcends language…Our mission is to capture and share the world’s moments.”
- Stats: 16 billion photos have been shared on Instagram. There are 1 billion likes every day. 130 million monthly users now.
- Systrom: “What do we work on next?” The history of Instagram: It started as Burbn. We brought photos but left video. Why? We wanted to be really good at speed, simplicity and beauty.
- “I’d like to introduce video on Instagram…Video is a complex medium. It’s hard to edit. It’s hard to manage. If it’s going to work inside of Instagram it’s got to be perfect. It wouldn’t be Instagram without being beautiful.”
- Instagram will now have a video icon on the bottom right of the screen. Slide it over to shoot video. He’s demonstrating shooting video of Blue Bottle coffee being poured.
- Video will be 15 seconds maximum. You can delete and re-record parts of a video if you make a mistake. There are 13 new filters just for video.
- The frame shown to people is typically the first frame. “We think that’s silly. It should be the frame you want to show your friends.” You can now choose which frame you want to show up on the Instagram feed. “It’s the same Instagram we know and love. But it moves.”
- He’s demonstrating videos on the beach. It plays once it doesn’t loop. As you scroll down and lift your finger it starts to move.
- It launches on Android now as well as iOS. It’s also on the Instagram website.
- But: “What if you could take video just like the pros?” Wobbly video is bad. “We teamed up with a handful of the world’s best video scientists.”
- Instagram is adding new video stabilization technology called “Cinema.”
- Obligatory video time with inspiring music, cats, coffee, kids and beaches! And people shooting Instagrams.
- Questions and Answers: Will videos post in Facebook? Videos will post like Facebook video.
- How will it impact load time? We don’t expect it to be an issue. “The team is ready for it.”
- Hashtags on Instagram? Nothing’s changed on Instagram. Hashtags have become common vocabulary of the Internet. #Latte has a million photos tagged. Self organized communities let people find each other.
- Why is 6 seconds not long enough? It’s an artistic choice. Depending on the time you give a user you get different content. Testing we had a bunch of different lengths. Not too long to take forever to download. Not too short to record your kids. That plus editing gave the right balance.
- How long will it buffer? Not long. We do pre loading and pre caching. But this is day one.
- When will we see on Windows phone? We don’t anything to announce.
- How many times can you edit it? You can do as many small clips as you want in the 15 seconds. (Different from the 3 clips in Vine.) Our goal not to introduce complex editing.
- Advertising implications? This is driven by consumer demand not business need. Brands use Instagram to reach fans. But video we didn’t design with advertising in mind. Over time we’ll figure out how it ends up being useful.
- Can you upload video to Instagram? For now you can only shoot video in the app, but in the future we may add it.
- Google Glass? I really want to try it, Systrom says.
- Minimum length?: Each video must be at least 3 seconds.
- Who owns them? To be clear: No plans to use Instagram in any advertisements."
Full Story Here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/06/20/live-from-facebooks-new-product-event/