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.
A move that was bound to come sooner or later, and it seems to be implemented quite well. The implementation also seems to put Instagram in direct competition with Vine. Videos are filmed in the same manner: tap and hold to record, let go to stop, tap and hold again to record again. Instagram, however, has chosen a maximum video length of 15 seconds, more than double Vine's cap of only 6 seconds. Whether or not that is a good decision remains to be seen, but the biggest reason that Vine should be afraid is that Instagram already has a huge user base. When Vine came out it was a new thing. They created a service for video on a UI very similar to what was already in use (by Instagram) for a service for photos. When Vine first came out, many average iPhone users thought it was a terrible idea. A common phrase I heard Vine referred to as was "Instagram for video", but it did not take long for that mindset to change. At this point Vine is finally starting to catch on, I'm seeing more of my friends from Facebook and Twitter join almost every day. So it makes sense that Instagram would choose now to introduce video. Vine has already done the hard work breaking down the barrier to short video services, now Instagram can strike and use their far larger user base to huge advantage. No longer do people have to go to the less popular Vine to post their short videos, they can instead do it in a place where all their friends will see.
