Facebook last week sent out invitations for itsJune 20 press eventsnail mail style, down to clean white envelopes. The graphics alludes the social networking giant has been working on“big ideas”and today TechCrunch chimes in to claim knowledge of the event’s agenda.
What Facebook apparently has in store is a video sharing feature for the Instagram generation. Rather boldly proclaiming that“Instagram will get video on June 20”, the story cites sketchy sources as asserting that the Instagram video service is much like Twitter’s Vine, which focuses on short six-second videos…
Ingrid Lunden, reporting forTechCrunch:
On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine effect.
She however cautions this could be“an intentional blind alley”given Facebook hasn’t wanted the details of the June 20 press meeting to leak out.
Please take this piece of information with a pinch of salt becauseTechCrunch previously calledfor a Facebook news-reading app.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Facebook-owned Instagram will add video.
At some pont, that is.
The sooner the better, because competition is moving at a blistering pace.
Facebook apps, as you know, have for some time included somewhat clunky video calling via Skype integration. With Instagram’s reach and popularity (which shows no signs of slowing down), Instagram would be foolish not to take a crack at video sharing.
Twitter’sVine, which was recently released on Android, amassed some13 million userson the iPhone as of June 3. And Microsoft-owned Skype today unveiled a newVideo Messaging featurewhich lets Skype owners send each other up to three-minute clips, even when they’re offline.
Others are moving in this direction, too.
Vine, for example, recently bolstered its offering bysnapping upthe GIF-making app Echograph.
Even Apple is enhancing iOS 7 to allow groups of people to upload videos to private or public Photo Streams.
That being said, I’m not entirely sure that the rumored Instagram Video feature matches up with the June 20 invitation.
“A small team has been working on a big idea,”the invite says.“Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.”
The wording and the fact Facebook snail-mailed invitations suggests to me something along the lines of a more traditional service, perhaps a photo printing collaboration or something. I’ll even go out on a limb to speculate that, yes, Facebook could indeed have a Google Reader app in the works.
At any rate, we’ll find out on Thursday and you can count on iDB to keep you in the loop.
