Instagram says that there are 80 million photos shared on its social network every day, but hasn’t revealed how many videos are posted.
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The new feature of curated videos might make you take two steps back as the new feature is just a video player; it does not have the traditional Instagram user interface that comes when during browsing of photos and videos; you only get the video and the name of the Instagram user who uploaded it. Twitter also launched Moments features earlier this month, which offers curated tweets about a few specific events. You can cycle through different video clips and if you’re interested in the creator of that piece of content, you can tap on their username and go directly to their profile or to that post. “People love to come together and celebrate big events on Instagram, so it makes a lot of sense to do this on Halloween, which is one of our biggest days”.
Not to be outdone by ephemeral messaging app Snapchat that has amassed a substantial user base in just a few years Instagram has now created its own curated content streams for popular events, right off the bat these streams sounds quite like Snapchat Stories, which are also curated streams of public snaps attached to a popular event.
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The playback might catch you a little off-guard at first, as Instagram’s new feature is literally just a little video player. Currently, the company told Wired that it has no plans to open its channel to advertisers – it will likely take the time to review the situation in order to not compromise the user experience – but as it continues to expand its advertising offering, it’s probably only a matter of time. At the moment, that’s all the confirmation we have that these new channels are now a part of Instagram, though you can expect a more official announcement in the near future. While moments lets users do the packaging, the Instagram video viewer is being curated in realtime by Instagram’s community team.
