Instagram’s Quest To Venture Into Video Just Got A Lot Harder

Instagram took something drawn out and requiring decent skill to be good (editing pictures) and make the process super simple and fun. While not everyone is on board with the squared off, (some say poorly) filtered images the app promotes, there’s no denying that it is a hit. Facebook saw Instagram for what it really is, too – not just a photo editor app with sharing capabilities but it’s own living, breathing social network. Snapping them up was a wise choice. That said, pictures are one thing, video is an entirely different story, and a story that Instagram has hinted at trying to crack for some time. It seemed like if anyone were to push quick video sharing to Instagram like levels sooner rather than later, that it would be Instagram doing the pushing. Unfortunately for them (and Facebook), it’s Twitter.

With the launch of Vine and its tight support for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram’s hill towards conquering the moving medium just got a lot more difficult.

For starters, being first has its pluses. If there isn’t any other decent alternative, people will take the only option they have. Although, Vine isn’t “first”n in the truest form of the word. Several other similarly packaged services have been around – and fallen into obscurity. That said, Vine is the first such service to have so much hype and such a large company behind it. Even if you’re not the true first to something, having a massive bank account behind you and equally gigantic user base in front of you can make all the difference in the world.

Besides being semi-first, the 1.0 Vine product we’ve been using for the last ~24 hours now is quite polished. In terms of UI it’s simple but well designed. Functionally speaking it’s sound, too. The process of downloading the new Vine app, signing up, taking your first 6-second clip and sharing it (not only on Twitter) is incredibly simple and fast. Add it all up and it’s easy to see how Instagram is going to have a lot harder time taking over the video scene like they did pictures.

As awesome as Vine 1.0 is, it’s not perfect. And at the time of publishing, not even 24 hours later, Vine 1.0.2 has been released into the App Store to fix some nasty bugs the release version had. Speaking of which, there have been quite a few reports of Vine uploads failing and the app just being crashy. Add to that the lack of any privacy settings; you can’t make hidden videos or channels. Still, for the rough edges this 1.0 (and pretty much any 1.0 has), there’s a lot of potential here. We’ve seen some early adopters call Vine’s 1.0 not as well put together as Instagram’s 1.0. In our experience, however, we haven’t found any performance issues on our end to agree with such a claim. The only thing we can side with in regards to negative first impressions – privacy. Loosing complete control of all your Vine content once it’s uploaded is a pretty glaring hole if you ask us.

For all intents and purposes, it seems as if Instagram has already lost the motion picture battle. But don’t write off Instagram’s video efforts just quite yet. They do have two big things on their side: an already massive 100+ million user base and a parent company with over 1 billion users. Even though Instagram won’t be first, their already established user base and easily reachable users will definitely help in penetrating market share even with Vine’s early lead.

Of course, if the major social networks can’t all play nice, no service will ever be as good as it could be. Case in point – earlier this morning it was found that Facebook has already blocked Vine’s access to searching through your Facebook friends. It’s no secret why (Facebook and Twitter are fierce enemies now) but that doesn’t make the situation any less ridiculous.

The mobile scene just got a lot more exciting with Vine. And while it may not be as big as photo sharing has proven to be, it will no doubt take off now that attention is being focused on video.

Want to join in on the fun? Currently, Vine is on iOS only and requires an iPhone 3GS and above as well as iOS 5.0 and above. And best of all, it’s free. Go get it (App Store Link).