So Instagram added video last Thursday, the 20th, and I've had four days to poke at it before deciding whether it's worth writing about. Short answer: yeah, it's worth writing about, mostly because I think it's already quietly beating Vine and nobody's really said that out loud yet.
For anyone who missed the Kevin Systrom event (I watched the liveblogs like a nerd, not the actual stream, because who has time), the pitch is simple. Fifteen seconds instead of Vine's six. Thirteen filters, the same ones you already know from photos, just running on top of moving footage now. And a stabilization thing they're calling Cinema that's supposed to smooth out your shaky hands. That last part is the one I actually care about, because I am, it turns out, extremely bad at holding a phone still.
I tested it on my dog knocking a plant off the windowsill (accidental, real footage, not staged, he's a menace) and then again filming the bartender at the place down the street making an old fashioned. The stabilization is legit. Not gimbal-level, don't get carried away, but it took the usual handheld wobble down to something watchable. Vine footage, by comparison, always looks like it was shot during an earthquake, and I say that as someone who has posted probably 40 Vines since it launched in January.
Here's the thing though, and this is the part that's more interesting than "new app has filters." Instagram already has 130 million monthly users, they said so at the same event, and every single one of those people already has a following built up from two and a half years of posting food photos and sunsets. Vine had to build an audience from zero. Instagram just had to turn on a feature and hand it to an audience that already existed. That's not a fair fight, and I don't think it was ever going to be one. Facebook owns Instagram, and Facebook does not do "cute scrappy competitor," Facebook does "we noticed you built something people like, here's our version, now go away."
I'll admit I've got a bias here. I never really got into Vine the way some people did. Six seconds always felt like a gimmick more than a format, like someone dared a product manager to make the world's most restrictive video app and they said sure, why not. Fifteen seconds is still short, obviously, but it's long enough to actually show something happening instead of just a single loop of a cat falling off a couch, which, don't get me wrong, is great content, just not something I want to be the entire medium.
Small complaint while I'm here: my phone storage is already garbage from photos and this is not helping. I'm on a 16 gig iPhone 5 (yes I know, I know, I'll upgrade when the contract's up) and between the Instagram videos, random voice memos, and the fact that I never delete a single screenshot, I'm constantly getting the "storage almost full" popup at the worst possible moments. Deleted three podcasts just to shoot that dog video. Priorities.
Anyway, a few of the app-tracking blogs were already noting that Vine's chart position wobbled a bit over the weekend, right after Instagram video went live, which, sure, correlation isn't causation, but come on. Timing's a little too convenient.
I don't think Vine's dead or anything dramatic like that. Six-second loops have their own weird charm and there's a specific kind of joke format that only works in that tiny window. But if I had to bet where the casual, non-power-user crowd ends up posting their video clips a year from now, I'm putting my money on the app that was already on everyone's phone before last Thursday. Sometimes the better product wins. Sometimes the product with 130 million people already logged in wins. This is pretty clearly the second one.
Going to go delete some more podcasts now.