It's been a pretty big week for social media: as the turmoil in Egypt reminded us of the importance of instant user-generated news, Twitter added instant translation for non-Arabic speakers to better understand what's happening in that part of the world. Meanwhile, Instagram and Vine are at it again, both adding features and/or bug fixes in an increasing social video arms race.
Instagram updated its app again Friday, adding new abilities to its "Instavid" 15-second video-shooting half of the app, which it unveiled to mixed reactions on June 20.
Almost immediately after releasing the app update for iOS, which added Instagram video, users started noticing that Instagram would not flip into landscape mode for videos. That was an annoying problem for anyone who hates VVS, or "vertical video syndrome," which is the internet meme term for any smartphone video that is shot in portrait mode, leaving two big frustrating black bars on either side of the tiny video.
That bug has thankfully been fixed. Along with the bug fix, Instagram added Cinema support for front-facing cameras. Cinema is the feature that stabilizes shaky video to make it look more professional. It's an exciting feature that Vine currently doesn't have, though according to The Next Web, YouTube's Capture app features a similar capability.
Vine
Twitter's six-second video shooting and sharing app, the chief rival for Facebook's relatively new Instagram Video, released a bigger update on Wednesday, adding several features, some of which were (rather nebulously) hinted at by Vine before Instagram announced its new video service.
New features include "revining," which is the Vine equivalent of the one-button retweet on Twitter, a privacy feature called "Protected Posts," which only allows people you approve to see protected Vines, and a revamped sharing experience.
Now, when you go to the Explore screen you'll see 15 categorical channels to browse, including things like comedy, music, art-experimental, family, and of course, cats. Each category has its own Popular feed, and there's now a trending filter called "On the Rise," to help you discover the next big Vine.
There are also a couple of new camera tools, including a new grid, focus, and ghost tools, which Vine hopes will keep video capturing fresh. This update, which was heavy on the social network side, is a clear response to Instagram Video, which enjoys the advantage of latching on to the original Instagram's huge pre-existing photography community and the network's elegant sharing and discovery tools. The full Vine update, like all of Instagram Video currently, is only available for iOS, but Vine says that all features will come to Android next week.
Is Twitter the greatest news gathering and broadcasting tool or not? This week one study came out saying that it's not, which may not be the last word, because in the same week Twitter added a feature to improve how news spreads from the Arab world.
As Egypt's turmoil began to boil Wednesday between the Egyptian army and protesters, and supporters of the just-ousted President Morsi, Twitter began testing a new translation tool to help spread news more quickly from the region. Assisted by Microsoft Bing's search engine translation, Twitter began automatically translating tweets from the accounts of high-profile Egyptians, like Morsi and opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei.
"As part of our experiment with tweet text translation, we've enabled translation for some of the most-followed accounts in Egypt, so people around the world can better understand and keep up with what's happening there," Twitter said in a statement to the Independent.
Even while Twitter continues to improve its news-broadcasting capabilities, a new research study on Twitter and breaking news was released, saying that Twitter still can't beat traditional newswires.
Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow used a software algorithm to track the Twitter activity of approximately 51 million tweets over 11 weeks in the summer of 2011. They compared those tweets with newswires from the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and the New York Times.
The researchers found that Twitter only broke news before the newswires in rare cases, usually involving sports or disaster-related news. The study will be presented next week at the AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in Boston.
How much you think Twitter has improved as a social network and news-broadcasting medium over the last two years may influence how much weight you give this study.
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
