After Facebook sent out enigmatic coffee-stained postcard press invites to a June 20 event, saying "A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product," rumors are hitting the internet that Facebook's Instagram might be adding video capability.
The anonymously sourced report comes from TechCruch, whose source says that Facebook will reveal on June 20 that Instagram will be adding a feature that will allow people to make short videos and share them on the popular social network. If this is true, Facebook would be following Twitter's lead. The rival social media network added Vine to iOS on Jan. 24 2012, an app and service which allows users to post six-second videos to their tweets. Vine became available for some versions of Android early in June.
While the Instagram video report is not confirmed and could be a red herring, there are indications that Instagram video may be coming. Earlier in May, former deputy social media editor for Reuters, Matthew Keys, reported that Facebook was testing a video feature for Instagram internally, according to an anonymous source. According to Keys' report, the feature would allow users to upload a video between five to 10 seconds long from their mobile devices, and share them on Instagram's network. Keys had no information about a launch date or whether Instagram's hallmark filters would be included as part of the new service.
The move by Facebook could be the most likely rumor attributed to the June 20 event, given how popular Vine — at the moment, a six-second video sharing social media service that is owned by Twitter — has become in the past six months. Twitter bought Vine in the fall of 2012 and debuted it in January 2013, albeit only for iOS devices.
In June, Instagram was announced for Android devices running Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 or higher.
Since its limited introduction the beginning of 2013, Vine has enjoyed a lot of buzz, with millions of Apple mobile users, including celebrities and journalists, and promotional companies creating Vine videos, but after its debut for Android in early June, Vine has taken off in popularity. For example according to Topsy analytics, in early June, the Vine video service surpassed Instagram on Twitter, almost doubling the number of authentic Instagram mentions within a week of Vine's introduction to Android.
Adding a video service like Vine, Instagram could capitalize on the user base that the company has built over the years, which according to TechCrunch, is over 100 million active users monthly. Including video would likely expand that active user base, and might draw some customers away from Vine, especially if Instagram has unique features with their service.
Facebook this year has already added Graph Search to their network, as well as a cleaner, easier to read News Feed. In April, the company announced Facebook Home for Android devices, a user interface featuring Facebook content and messaging, and an ill-fated Facebook phone, in partnership with HTC, called the HTC First.
In addition to the rumors of an Instagram video announcement during the June 20 event, there are also rumors that Facebook is developing a replacement for Google Reader, which is being shuttered on July 1, or a further development in their hashtag system for "public conversations," which went live on June 12.
Of course, these are all rumors, so keep checking with us for more information on Facebook's June 20 event as we get closer to that date.