This week Instagram and their new owners Facebook, announced an all-new and improved version 4.0 with video. The main changes here were to combat the newly popular Vine video sharing brought to us from Twitter. Now that we’ve had a full day to enjoy the new Instagram with video, we wanted to share 5 reasons why it’s better than Vine. Well, on Android at least.
Vine allows for users to take up to 6 seconds of video for any and all occasions, then neatly share them on Vine and Twitter with all their friends and family. It’s a lot of fun, been available on iOS since January, and recently arrived for Android in a limited state. Below you’ll find 5 reasons why Instagram with video is better than Vine, and why I’ve already uninstalled the latter and will be sticking with Insta.
User base
For one, Instagram has nearly 130 million monthly users, and is integrated with more than just Twitter. You can share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and many other social sites. The sharing features are better, broader, and more appropriate. However, this is nitpicking and the real reasons are laid out for you below.
Vine’s Android app is just awful. Not to be rude, but it really is. It’s a paired down version compared to iOS, freezes often, doesn’t scroll smooth, and doesn’t even allow us to use the front facing camera. All the added features on iOS are missing on Android, and they’ve had over 5 months to get it right. Yesterday Instagram was updated and blows it out of the water. Getting every aspect right. We have hashtags, mentions, and millions of friends available at any moment.
Auto-Play video
On Vine the videos just automatically play, no matter what. As you scroll down they instantly start playing and you hear crazy noises, dogs barking, waterfalls, and anything else that particular user uploaded to Vine. It’s obnoxious, and there’s no way to stop it. Oh, and since they ALL load, the app takes forever sometimes. Which probably is part of the reason their app is laggy, and doesn’t scroll very smooth.
On Instagram if you head into settings on your main profile page, there’s tons of options. One very important one is what you see above. You can disable auto-play. Which will then let you select what Instagram video you actually want to watch while scrolling through your feed, by just hitting the fancy play button. Which brings us to our third reason.
Pause/Play
If you enable the feature above, Instagram videos won’t just automatically play. Instead you can choose what to watch, and when. Something that isn’t available on Vine, which frustrated me. Then whether or not you have auto-play enabled or disabled, you can pause a video at any moment. It makes more sense for longer videos, but still, is a feature Vine should have but doesn’t.
15 second video
The pause and play features were probably included because Instagram one-upped Vine’s 6 second video sharing, by announcing you’ll be able to take 5-15 seconds at a time. So while 6 seconds doesn’t really need a pause button (really, you can’t wait 6 seconds) the option really should be there. Facebook and Istagram once again got this right. Giving users the option to make quick, fun, and sweet 5 second clips. Or extended 15 second films should they choose. We’re expecting Vine to update with 10-12 in the near future, but who knows.
Camera
Last but certainly not least is the camera. The camera is hugely important here, because after all, we’re uploading video. I don’t know about you iOS users, but on Android we don’t have a very good camera on Vine. There’s no auto-focus, and we can’t even use our front camera camera should we choose. With Instagram we have both the auto-focus (which you can control where) as well as the option to use the front camera. Vine has front cam support on iOS, but not Android. So take this as you will. Again we said 5 reasons it’s better on Android!
So there you have it. That is 5 reasons (among many) for why I personally prefer Instagram over Vine. And we didn’t even mention the fact that Instagram has 13 unique video-only filters to truly make your videos personal and creative. Something Vine forgot about completely. So there is six reasons!
To each his own, but feel free to learn more and give both a try from the links below. Don’t forget to drop us a comment on what app you prefer for your short-film sharing fun.
Can’t you just tap on a video in Vine to pause/play?
I have 100 reasons YouTube is better than both.
You really should actually test an app before dissing it. It’s simple to pause Vine just by tapping on the video once. I bet you also haven’t applied the latest major update to Vine before deciding Instagram had it beat. Doesn’t really matter. Vine has caught hold and FB was too late with this update to Instagram. The younger gen (13-18) will determine which app wins out and Twitter/Vine is seen as cool with them, where FB/Instagram is already losing favor as something soccer moms and people late to the party use. FB will go the way of MySpace within 5 years. Privacy concerns, data leaks and continual advertisement overload will be the dagger.
This was wrote before the update.. and yes the pause/play on vine is a tap.. when it works.
Yes the video option is really cool in instagram
but what i want it the categorization of images and videos separately