The battle is on! Last week, it was revealed to the masses that the popular photo sharing app Instagram would be expanding to video. Now on Instagram, instead of just taking cute pictures of your really cute pumpkin spiced latte with really cute filters, you can take 15 second videos of your really cute pumpkin spiced latte with really cute filter.
GAMECHANGER.
Up until this point, the most popular way to send short video clips out was Vine. Vine is similar to Instagram video, only you really can’t do much in the way of filters and the clips are 6 seconds long. That doesn’t really seem like a long time, but trust me, 6 seconds is surprisingly longer than you would thing. Also similar to .gif files, as soon as the video is over it is looped and repeats itself so it seems even longer. I remember thinking, who on earth would feel the need to take a 6 second video and share that. But then again, when Twitter, came out, I remember thinking, who on earth thinks they are important enough to send out 140 character messages on the interweb. The simple answer to that in retrospect was EVERYONE. Vine has grown, like a weed (see what I did there) over the last few months. Working at a college, I have seen this first hand. Every student I know, is all about Vine. I don’t completely get it, but in the last few weeks, I’ve gotten closer to downloading it to see what it’s about.
But then Instagram went and stomped all over Vine’s progress. In the ultimate thunder-stealing, they’ve upped the length of their videos, they added filters, and they already have an extremely large user base, so it is not long before Vine becomes the new Myspace to Instagram’s Facebook. Speaking of which, Instagram was bought by Facebook some months ago. Facebook owns Instagram and Twitter owns Vine. Facebook and Twitter are like the ultimate frenemies. They understand they can both co-exist without either losing any cache, but both want to be the innovator. Sometimes these sorts of passive aggressive battle royales hurt the consumer, but right now it’s too soon to tell. Twitter took the first shot with Vine, but Facebook answered back loudly – as they are often want to do – with Instagram co-op of video integration.
It should be a fun fight to watch. The early prognosticators are saying Instagram won, but I think it’s way too soon to tell. Usually it takes a few months for the other guy to disappear. Hell, Gowalla didn’t disappear overnight when Foursquare became the king of check-ins. They always fight back. But then again sometimes they don’t know that they are dead yet (RIP Myspace for Music).
About Russ Stevens
Russ Stevens is an editor and writer at Rookerville and a guidance counselor at Nyack HS. He mostly writes about either loving or hating things. In his spare time, he performs Improv comedy with his troupe Priest and The Beekeeper and is a co-producer of their monthly variety show Pig Pile. He loves all the New York sports teams that are historically bad, and he hates lateness more than anything in the world.