Instagram has taken a foray into the world of video media through its newly launched video sharing tool. The Facebook-owned company had previously garnered popularity as a social networking service providing users with a “a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends and family”. Its hugely popular photo-sharing platform already had over 90 million users by 2013 (some reports put it as over 100 million) and is in direct competition with Vine – another video-sharing network, owned by Facebook competitors Twitter.

So, what is the difference between the two?

The biggest difference is what Instagram video can do and what Vine can’t do.

With Instagram, you can:

  • Record 15 seconds of video content.
  • Edit together or delete clips that you’ve created without having to start all over again.
  • Use different filters. 13 to be exact, with unusual names like ‘Ginza’, ‘Ashby’ and ‘Dogpatch’.
  • Create your own cover photo to front your video so that it initially appears as a static picture.
  • Share your creation on a multitude of social media networks.

With Vine you can:

  • Record a ‘generous’ 6 seconds of video.
  • Create a loop of your video.
  • Share your creation on Twitter and Facebook only.

The looping feature is the one thing that Vine has that Instagram does not have. But Instagram comes back with one better again. With the ‘Cinema’ app providing video stabilization, Instagram users can make their shaky camerawork look like a piece of art. This definitely gives it the one-upmanship over Vine.

With 9 more seconds of recording time on Instagram video, companies have found that this is just enough time to create commercial content. Some brands have already created commercials on Vine, but with run-time being short and sweet they are often dependent on Vine’s looping capabilities, ensuring that the captive audience sees the same thing over – and over again. With Instagram’s editing feature, brands can create advertisements that are longer and slicker.

Vine was released early in 2013 to iPhone users and attracted over 13 million users. Later in the year, it was made available for Android phones. Once Instagram video was released in late June, the number of people using Vine dropped considerably. It seems that the issue is that Vine had to start its fan base from scratch whereas Instagram already had their users in place. The addition of video means that users can now video-share as well as photo-share and that any new users would just add to the already well-established Instagram network.

So which do you choose? Well, that would really depend on what you want. Obviously Instagram is way fancier but some prefer Vine’s no-nonsense quick video format. The user base of Vine is much smaller but their videos are often quirkier and more reliant on a creative mind with infinite loops of gif-like images. It all comes down to whether you feel your message needs to be 6 or 15 seconds, if you need to edit and if you require the use of filters. But then again, if you need more than this, there’s always YouTube, right?