Saturday 29 June 2013

Facebook's Instagram sends a farewell to Twitter's Vine

Instagram's new video feature made a splash in its first week, outpacing its main competitor, Vine. Parent company Facebook introduced 15 sec video sharing plug in on June 20, immediately sending Vine Twitter shares plummeting during the month leading up to Instagram's news, Vine was riding a roller coaster of Twitter popularity, outshining its filtered-photo rival in terms of shares. But after Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom announced video for his photo-sharing app, Instagram links skyrocketed on the micro-blogging site, while Vine usage tumbled.

Instagram, in fact, reported more than 5 million videos uploaded to the site within its first 24 hours of service, plus a peak 40 hours of video uploaded per minute when the Miami Heat won the NBA championship. According to Topsy data, Instagram sharing peaked at about 1.83 million Twitter shares the day it added video. Since then, there have been between 1.4 million and 1.5 million Twitter shares per day from Instagram in the past few days. Vine, meanwhile, had about 1.88 million Twitter shares on June 20, down from 3 million on June 15. But Vine has dropped to about 900,000 to 1 million Twitter shares per day in recent days. Vine is still kicking, though: The Twitter-owned app on Thursday launched an Android update with support for front-facing cameras and a number of other improvements. Vine version 1.2.0 now includes a new upload manager for unsubmitted posts, faster camera loading time, support for more devices, and a boost in overall speed, as well as bug fixes and user interface improvements. The Vine update is currently available in the Google Play store. It’s been just over a week since Face book Inc’s Instagram added a video feature. But the additional video tool is already taking a toll on its biggest rival Vine. Instagram has over 130 million users, and monetization of the tool will further boost revenues for the social networking giant. Facebook Inc shares were up 0.32 percent to $24.74 at 12:58 PM EDT. Think about it, man—you got two apps here, one’s shooting for six seconds, the other is shooting for 15 seconds! Which are you going to pick?! 15, man! While it’s hard to imagine doing anything all that meaningful in an extra nine seconds, it might actually make a difference. Then again more isn’t always better—who would have thought that imposing an arbitrary 140-character cap would have made Twitter one of the most powerful communication tools on the planet? Also, Instagram already has all of the people, so it’s entirely possible that in this case the hitchhiker (to extend the metaphor) will turn out to be totally right and the get-rich-quick scheme will work perfectly. Plus it has all of the filters. Which I guess is pretty if you’re into filters. The only thing keeping Twitter from toppling Facebook in terms of user growth and relevancy is that Twitter doesn’t have a great photo-sharing solution and Facebook is the world’s leading photo sharer. So last year Twitter tried to buy Instagram. What did Facebook do? Swept in and bought the app for $1 billion, even though they were already the leading photo sharer. Next Twitter goes out and builds their own freaking 8 Minute Abs. And what does Facebook do? 7 Minute Abs! You’ve got to hand it to Facebook, they are doing a pretty good job of keeping Twitter down.



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