Facebook held an event at their Menlo Park headquarters in California to announce exactly what’s been rumored, Instagram now supports video.
After an introduction from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, took the stage. He began, like most tech presentations do, by talking briefly about where Instagram is today. With over 16 billion photos shared, and a billion likes a day, Instagram is “about coming together and staying together.” And it currently sports 130 million monthly users.
But Kevin asked the question, if they’re “about capturing and sharing the world’s moments, what’s next? Where are we going? What do we work on next?”
He started working on Instagram in 2010. At the time, they’ve been working with a product that dealt with both photos and video. They wanted to be good at three things: speed, simplicity and beauty, and back then, those things weren’t possible with video. But today, video is now achievable on every device, and is now possible within Instagram.
Three things that they’ve focused on:
Simplicity
Simplicity really matters when it comes to video. We’re used to seeing complex interfaces for editing. The new Instagram will be simple.
Beauty
it wouldn’t be Instagram without allowing you to produce beautiful video.
Community
From day one, 130 million people will have access to record what’s going on and share them real-time.
Changes
Instagram hasn’t changed. You still tap the capture button in the middle of the toolbar and it’s the same screen, but now you’ll have a video icon in the bottom right that takes you into video mode. If you slide over you have a separate capture button.
The limit is 15 seconds of video.
They’ve been told by communities that they need to be able to clip scenes together so, like Vine, users can take multiple video segments and then compile them together.
Users can remove any clip by tapping the delete button on any specific clip, and then can choose to re-record a clip if needed.
Clicking next, users will have access to 13 filters designed specifically for video, unlike any other video platform. Selecting a filter is similar to photos. Just scroll through and try different filters and apply whatever one you wish.
When you see a mobile video in a feed on other platforms, often the thumbnail (frame) you see is the first frame, which may not be ideal for sharing. After selecting your filter, you will be able to select the frame you want to use as the preview, and then see the preview before posting.
As with images, you can put in your description, add a map location, and share to your friends and favorite social networks.
Videos shared by friends are marked by an icon in the upper right.
Videos play once, do no loop, and are inserted into your feed right along with images.
Updated apps for Android and iOS, as well as the web, will be available today.
But Wait, There’s More
As casual video takers, particularly with our smartphones, many of our videos are of poor quality due to shakiness. Instagram teamed up with a handful of the top video experts in the world and came up with a new tool.
Cinema
Cinema is Cinematic Stabilization of videos that will change video forever. Even if you’re running to keep up with your kid and take video, the video you capture will be stable and beautiful.
Check out the updated apps today and let me know what you think. As businesses, this should be even more incentive to look for ways to integrate Instagram, and video, into your online marketing portfolio.