Facebook is turning content-sharing platform Instagram into a direct competitor for apps like Snapchat and Twitter. More than a year after Facebook Inc. failed to acquire Snapchat, the company has launched a new feature on Instagram that is already available in the feeds of users from the United States. This comes as Facebook's answer to Snapchat's video channel service and Twitter's Moments.
According to STGist's report, Instagram's video channel is curated by the social platform's staffers. The new service shows the best videos from Instagram users, all grouped according to content. The channel shows, for example, the best Halloween videos from all over the world, as presented by Instagrammers. Instagram has tested the service on Halloween.
Below the "Best Videos" tab, trending tags are also shown. Tech sites, like Wired, and several others believe that this is Facebook's bid to compete with Snapchat's Discover feature and the newly launched Live Stories. The new Snapchat feature shows topics and events around the world that are broadcasted with videos and images by Snapchat users to their communities. Twitter's Moments is also a competition. The feature shows the best Vines and tweets from the platform's best known users.
Instagram's video channel service has already begun rolling out to Instagrammers in the United States, and it is still unclear when the service will be available to other parts of the world. The feature is Facebook's latest attempt to go head-to-head with both Snapchat and Twitter. The company has launched Slingshot, a chat app, last year, which it has intended to compete with other platforms.
Including a video channel to social platforms is said to be a strategy to lure in more advertisers into the social networks, according to some online reports. Facebook itself has been increasingly active in updating its advertising features, adding functions to its Pages and regularly updating its video feature. Instagram, for its part, supports videos and photos, which are maximized by business users as they regularly update their accounts with images and captions of their products.
