Social media giant Facebook yesterday announced it will roll out a video feature for its popular photo-sharing app, Instagram.
Introducing the feature, head of Facebook's Instagram team, Kevin Systrom, said 130 million people will have access to video in the same way they have access to pictures from day one. "We need to do to video what we did to photos and beauty has got to fit in."
He added that 13 new custom-designed filters are now available for the video feature only. "What we realised very early on is that the filters we had for photos were great for photos, but we needed something new for video. We wanted to evolve. So we partnered with an artist that specialises in video filters."
The new feature can be accessed by selecting the movie camera icon, which will appear along with the "take a photo" option. It directs the user to video mode and enables up to 15 seconds of video through the Instagram camera. Facebook also introduced a "Cinema" feature, which helps to stabilise videos recorded using a smartphone in hand.
Systrom said the feature would also be available for Android, allowing all its users to take advantage of video.
Video on Instagram is Facebook's first attempt at video-sharing, which has already been a part of Twitter with its Vine app. Facebook bought the popular social photo-sharing application in September last year, for just over $715 million.
Competition
Video on Instagram will compete directly with Twitter's Vine, which was launched in October last year and already has a following of more than 13 million users.
Owner of digital communications agency Retroviral Digital Communications, Mike Sharman, says Instagram will definitely take the lead as it allows for 15 seconds of video recording, while Vine only allows for six.
"And the adding of filters and editing to video on Instagram is a huge plus for the service," he says.
Sneaking in ads
Sharman says it's simply a matter of time before Instagram's videos will contain ads. "With 130 million people engaging with the app, ads are a foregone conclusion."
Although the photo-sharing app doesn't feature any ads yet, changes made to its terms and conditions in December last year regarding the implementation of advertising, was a clear indicator of how users would react.
The announcement saw Instagram's daily active users drop 42%, from 16.3 million in mid-December to 7.6 million by 14 January, according to figures from monitoring company AppStats.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also previously indicated big brands have shown keen interest in advertising on Instagram, but added there were no plans to implement such a service.
Sharman says it's a bit early to see if local advertisers will be able to benefit from the additions to the platform. "But the more brands understand a platform, the less likely they are to disrupt the viewer.
"We are living in an age where marketers need to understand the platforms better to encourage consumers to be more receptive to branding messaging," he adds.
He says a brand that uses an Instagram account smartly is more likely to be engaged with than a set of ads.
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