Instagram, the immensely popular photo-sharing app that was acquired by Facebook in a $1 billion deal last year, is not just for photos anymore.
At a press event at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters, Instagram’s co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom debuted a new feature called video capabilities called, simply, “Video On Instagram” which lets you create 15-second videos. The
The event is still going on, so this story will be updated as more details are offered.
This feature will impact a huge number of people, due to Instagram’s current reach. 130 million monthly users, who have shared 16 billion photos to date. Engagement on the app is high: Over one billion “likes” are added to the service every day.
This confirms our scoop from earlier this week, puts an end to the years-long search for an “Instagram for video” that has spawned a number of new startups aiming to fill the gap.
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has said in the past that video could be in Instagram’s future, but has stressed that video adds challenges that are not presented by photos. In an interview with the Verge last fall, Systrom was asked why video-sharing apps haven’t taken off in the same way that photo-sharing apps have. He said: “I think it’s a combination of data speed limitations and the time it takes to watch a video. Videos are a very difficult medium to be good at, and also a difficult medium to consume quickly.” Presumably, being a part of a company with Facebook’s resources has enabled Instagram to finally build a feature that rises to video’s challenges.
This is also a clear move that pits Facebook more firmly against Twitter, which acquired its own short-form video sharing app called Vine last year. This morning Vine went on the offense, announcing a slate of new features.
Buzz has been gathering about what exactly today’s announcement would entail since snail mail invites were sent out to reporters earlier this month. Our own Ingrid Lunden broke the news earlier this week that the announcement would be Instagram launching video capabilities, though there had also been buzz that the social network would unveil its own RSS reader, filling a space that is soon to be left vacant by the shutdown of Google Reader at the end of this month. It now is clear that any news reader app was not in the cards for today.
