EnlargeThe rumor is Facebook's announcement this week will be a video functionality for Instagram.
Jon Xavier Web Producer- Silicon Valley Business Journal Email | Twitter | Google+ Facebook is announcing something Thursday, and as is usual with "secret" announcements, the rumor mill has already churned through most of the possibilities as to what it could be.
Last week, we heard it would be some kind of Google Reader-replacement, or at least some integration of RSS, based on some references someone found on its site. This week, the buzz is Facebook will unveil a mobile-first video service to go up against Twitter's Vine.
Citing an anonymous source, TechCrunch reported today that the planned announcement is a video add-on to Instagram, which will gear up the popular photo sharing service to go head-to-head with Vine. TechCrunch didn't have many details about the supposed service, but it did cite an earlier reports that Facebook was testing a service internally that let users share 5- to 10-second videos.
If this is what Facebook is announcing (and there's really no guarantee that it is), it would be a very logical progression for Instagram. Video has been getting a lot of attention recently after the success of Vine, and there's already a slew of services like Viddy and SocialCam that are essentially taking Instagram's low-fi filter aesthetic into the realm of moving pictures, to varying levels of success. Instagram's userbase is huge and probably overlaps nicely with the demographic that wants social video. Why use a service that bills itself as "Instagram for video" when you can just use Instagram for video?
The sharing space is still potentially wide open, as well, with only Vine and Tout really having much traction, and the former naturally Twitter-centric. Integrating video into Instagram is a way for Facebook to claim this feature before a third-party app developer does it for them.
It would also fit well with Facebook's overall mobile strategy. Video has been one of the hotter targets for advertisers, particularly on mobile devices where screen real estate is at a premium and thus there's less space for traditional banner advertising. The company had been experimenting heavily with inline advertising in the news feed, but is apparently backing off of that initiative.
Jon Xavier is Web Producer at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1826.
