Instagram announced yesterday that it would be adding video to its now extremely popular (130 million user) app (acquired last year by Facebook). The video part works alot like Twitter’s Vine in that you can only make short videos and that putting different angles together is very easy. That led many to suggest that Instagram was now just a copy-cat.
But Instagram isn’t about just allowing video. Actually, there are lots of ways of doing that from a phone prior to Vine coming along. Instead, Instagram is about making good looking mobile imagery. That is why the filters were significant. It is also why they are significant for video and they work extremely well there. In addition, Instagram added a ‘cinema’ feature that basically filtered out the bumps in video when your hand is shaky. Again, this is something possible when editing a video on a desktop (like iMovie) but now is done easily on a mobile device. The end result is a video worth sharing — not just one that is easy to share. And that is a significant innovation.
Digitopoly 