Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now

In online video competition, Facebook offers an extra 9 seconds

Adriene Hill Jun 21, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

In online video competition, Facebook offers an extra 9 seconds

Adriene Hill Jun 21, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

If I were to do this story as a Vine video — with only six seconds — it’d look like this.



Instagram offers videos with an extra nine seconds, which sounds small but is actually a pretty big difference.

“Your story or your message can be a little longer, a little funner, which is always nice,” says Richard Koci Hernandez, a new media professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The Instagram video version of my story looks like this:



Better, right?

But the extra time isn’t always a bonus, says Hernandez, “Nine more seconds of the foam in your cappuccino could really turn people off.” He thinks there’s going to be room for both Vine and Instagram video.

Some analysts expect marketers will love the extra seconds — more space to sell whatever they are selling. But Nate Elliott from Forrester says for Facebook, adding video to Instagram, is all about the data, “the more Facebook gets people onto Instagram, the more they get people using Instagram, the more data they are generating and the more data those people are generating; and it’s the data that’s really valuable to Facebook and marketers as well.”

Doesn’t every story about Facebook kind of end this way?

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.