Instagram adds video

Facebook’s little photo-sharing app just became a video-sharing app too. Whether they’re using Apple or Android phones, Instagram’s 130 million users can now simply pick whether that image they want to capture is better static or in motion, then click on either the little camera or videocam icon (see the left-hand screenshot below). If they go with video, they can capture up to 15 seconds (no looping over and over as in other video-sharing apps). The filters that have always added to the fun in this app are there for video too (13 of them for it), and they can pick the frame they want to use to represent that little video on their profile or wherever they share it. If their shooting isn’t very steady, there’s a pretty amazing feature called Cinema (for now just for iPhone 4s and 5) that stabilizes the video for them.

Everything else about this new addition is a lot like the photo part of Instagram – which is almost more about illustrated conversations than mere photo-sharing (more on that in posts under “Related links” below). “We’re still committed to making sure you have control over all of your content. Only the people who you let see your photos will be able to see your videos,” wrote Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom in the IG blog. And we ConnectSafely folk have written a straightforward, 5-page parents’ guide to Instagram that tells you how to help your kids keep it fun and constructive (we’re in the middle of updating it as I write this). Here’s coverage of the video announcement at TechCrunch.

Related links

• “Why not a gazillion [Instagram] ‘likes’?: Getting wise to gamification in social media (& life)”
• “Undercover mom on Instagram”
• “Kids, Instagram & its new feature ‘Photos of You'”