Instagram, the photo sharing social network owned by Facebook, will be hosting a mystery event on June 20th where it is thought new video sharing features will be added.
A source with insider knowledge told Techcrunch recently that Instagram has plans to tread of Vine’s toes by introducing video capture and sharing options later this month. An event has now been confirmed for this Thursday, although there’s no official word on what’s in store.
Twitter’s Vine app, which offers the ability to create GIF-like 6 second videos and share them online, recently over took Instagram in terms of Twitter shares. This happened shortly after an Android version of the Vine app was launched – Vine was originally launched on iPhone only and proved to be very popular within a few short months.
It now seems that Facebook wants a slice of Twitter’s success – perhaps already shown by their adoption of hashtags recently – and so it will offer both video and photo sharing through Instagram. It’s not yet clear whether the feature will be added to existing apps or whether a new Instagram Video app will be launched.
Other rumours have suggested that Facebook will launch an RSS reader of some sort, timed to coincide with the closure of Google Reader which comes to an end on July 1st. This could well be revealed at the event and would give Facebook users 10 days to migrate their stuff from Google’s service. If this rumour turns out to be true, Facebook will be going up against a number of rivals who have also tried to lure in the large and soon to be fleeing Google Reader userbase, including Digg and Feedly.
Would you use Instagram for video sharing or are you already an avid Vine user?