The Instagram for Video…?
Lots of buzz about who will be the Instagram of video. But Instagram had a last-mover advantage. The market was ready for Instagram. They craved it. They stuffed as many camera apps onto their phone as possible, but none of them delivered quite what Instagram did. Kevin and his team seized an opportunity to get it right.
I’m not sure we’re there with video.
The Wall Street Journal actually has an article about this today, and they toss out some numbers that “millions of people” are using video sharing mobile apps. I wonder if this is the case, or if we’re seeing false engagement numbers from Facebook’s new “authorize the app to view the content” methodology. Google+’s engagement metrics come to mind.
I’ve seen more than my fair share of friends on Facebook posting links from Socialcam, including my own mother. And I’m fairly certain the majority of them aren’t even sure what Socialcam is. It’s anecdotal, sure. But you don’t see that kind of false engagement from Instagram, because it’s just not built that way. You don’t count as an “Instagram user” just by viewing a photo. Direct comparisons are tricky.
We’ll see a couple of decent exits for these startups, but from a product perspective and from a consumer interest perspective, I’m still wondering: are people really interested in doing this right now? Or, at the very least, are we going to need to wait for mobile bandwidth to catch up?
