Facebook’s Instagram photo sharing service appears to be on the brink of adding video sharing to the set of features it is capable of supporting. Sources have surfaced today indicating they believe a Facebook event scheduled for June 20th could be the unveiling of this video sharing capability. The addition of video sharing appears to be in response to Twitter’s Vine service which enables the sharing of short videos through that network. Since being unveiled about six months ago, Vine has been increasing in popularity at a nice pace with iOS users. However, once Vine for Android was released earlier this month, the service has exploded and in the process, the number of tweets sharing Vine videos has surpassed the number of tweets sharing Instagram photos.
The move to incorporate video sharing into the Instagram platform appears on the surface to be a result of the popularity of Vine. No doubt when Vine surfaced, Facebook started working on a similar service although it may not have foreseen the impact Vine would have once Android users had access to the service. Even while the sharing of short clips was in a growth cycle, Instagram was in the process of pulling the ability to display photos inline on Twitter. That change has forced users to opt for one service over the other or go through the trouble of double-posting photos. Facebook’s gamble with the move was that users would opt to stick with the Facebook/Instagram platform. However, with the new Vine service, users had another reason to opt for the Twitter platform when sharing photos or video.
Facebook has declined to comment on the rumors. We will have to keep an eye on Facebook’s event on the 20th to see whether short video sharing is coming to the Instagram platform or if other new services are in the works.
source: TechCrunch
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