Is Instagram about to unveil a new video app?

17 Jun 2013

Rumours are emerging that Facebook-owned Instagram may reveal a new video service. Facebook is holding a press event at its San Francisco, California, headquarters on 20 June and so far rumours have emerged about a potential news feed to plug the glaring gap left by Google Reader and now video coming to Instagram.

TechCrunch today, quoting sources, reported that Facebook will reveal video support for Instagram on 20 June as a way of competing with Twitter’s Vine and successful services like Keek, which has amassed an audience of 45m users.

Twitter’s Vine app lets users record a six-second clip on video and share that out on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Keek’s service lets users record videos up to 36 seconds and in recent weeks the fast-emerging social network created a new feature that enables up to 36 users to chat privately in a group using text or video messages.

Press in the US have received invitations to an event on 20 June to discover what a “small team that has been working on a big idea” is all about. Enigmatically, each invitation came with a print of a coffee cup on the bottom right corner.

Movie camera image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com