Facebook?s Instagram adds video and additional filter functionality
Instagram takes on Twitter?s Vine bringing 15 seconds of video capability to its community-driven photo-sharing social network
Community-driven photo-sharing service Instagram has added video to its functionality. It now faces off with Twitter?s Vine and others as the race for social network supremacy rages on.
The community wants to enhance static images that are shared as its popularity continues to grow, especially amongst younger users, ?Over the past two and a half years, Instagram has become a community where you can capture and share the world?s moments simply and beautifully. Some moments, however, need more than a static image to come to life. Until now these stories have been missing from Instagram,? Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom
explained in a blog post.
?Today, we?re thrilled to introduce Video on Instagram and bring you another way to share your stories. When you go to take a photo on Instagram, you?ll now see a movie camera icon. Tap it to enter video mode, where you can take up to fifteen seconds of video through the Instagram camera,? continued Systrom.
The addition of video brings a
Cinema feature that allows users to stabalise video on their devices after it has been created. The full guidelines on how to use video are available in the
Instagram help centre, which will be familiar to Vine users, which has similar functionality such pausing and re-starting video capture. Updates for Instagram also includes 13 filters that are built around the new video functionality allowing users to create an image from a favourite scene making videos look more attractive when they?re not being played.
Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, launching on 06 October 2010 and then acquired by Facebook in April 2013 (the social networks largest acquisition to date). The community has 130 million monthly active users, 50 percent of its audience are outside the USA, 16 billion photographs are shared, receives 1 billion likes daily with users adding 45 million photographs daily according to its website.
Vine (acquired by Twitter in October 2012) and a direct competitor to Instagram?s new video service updated its app on the same day it sent out mail marketing and coinciding with the announcement from Instagram. Instagram photographs were visible in Twitter stream feed, but the functionality was removed at the end of last year and hasn?t returned since. Photograph and video apps aren?t strangers to mobile, tablet device and web users, but in recent times there have been standout leaders, with the aforementioned being some of the most popular in this space now. With the recent additions from Instagram, the competition between the two is set to intensify ? whether Google+ enters this arena remains to be seen.
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