Facebook announced – video on Instagram at a press event at its Menlo Park headquarters today. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom says that on day one it will give 130 million people access to video.
"This is the same Instagram we all know and love," Systrom said, "but it moves."
The app lets users shoot 15-second videos (with a three-second minimum), with multiple cuts, and features new filters and an image stabilization feature called Cinema to eliminate the shakiness that happens so often on mobile devices.
>"This is the same Instagram we all know and love, but it moves." - Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom
Although Mark Zuckerberg kicked things off by telling us "at Facebook our mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected," he quickly handed the stage over to Systrom.
"When we joined Facebook a lot of people asked me what Instagram is all about," says Systrom. "When I think about what Instagram is, I think about moments and visual imagery."
Systrom noted that more than 16 billion photos have been shared on Instagram by its 130 million users, and more than 1 billion likes are posted every day. But he noted that the original features, when it was developed in 2010, were location, photos, and video. In order to make a great photo-sharing app, "we left video on the table."
The app captures 15 seconds of video and lets you include multiple clips, including the ability to re-record clips and apply one of 13 custom video filters. You can record as many clips as you want in those 15 seconds by holding down the shutter button, and delete clips if you don't want them in the final mix. Systrom says the team tried testing many different lengths, and 15 seconds was "the Goldilocks moment" that was not too long or not too short.
"It's 15 seconds of beautiful video that you can record very easily," says Systrom.
The new Instagram update also tries to fix what Systrom calls a "problem" with mobile video–seeing just the first frame of a video when you preview it. Video on Instagram lets you select a custom frame for a preview image. The features will all be familiar to Instagram users–hashtags, filters, seamless sharing. It will be available for iOS and Android "on day one," and will also live on the Web.
This update comes six months after the debut of Vine, a simple app for sharing video clips that's owned and operated by Twitter. Notably, Vine's clips are only six seconds long, and they loop, which Instagram's clips do not. Also, the Instagram video-sharing tool is built directly into Instagram's app, so all the photo sharing, video sharing, commenting, and liking all happen in one mobile client. Vine requires a separate app download and is not directly attached to any of Twitter's official apps.
On stage Thursday, Systrom also showed off a brand-new image-stabilization feature called Cinema meant to keep shots steady when shooting on a mobile phone. Frankly, the demo of this was impressive.
Systrom says that just because video is coming, that doesn't mean ads are as well. For now, he says, he wants brands to engage "organically."
He also offered assurances that users need not be freaked out by the terms of service debacle of the end of last year that gave the impression that people's photos could be used in ads. "Photos and videos," he noted, "they are your own. We have no plans to use photos or videos in any types of advertisements."
