Facebook's video feature for Instagram, which was released a week ago, has already proven to be more popular than some of its older and bigger competitors.
According to Avvasi's mobile video Quality of Experience measurement tool, Facebook's Instagram app generated more traffic than both Google's YouTube and Twitter's Vine in the first four days since it was introduced.
Avvasi observed that the total number of video sessions had doubled since the service launched, with Instagram accounting for over 30% of the total over-the-top video, instantaneously passing YouTube and Vine. It also found that on some networks, the overall quality of Instagram videos were affected negatively due to the sudden increase in traffic and network congestion.
Smartphone clean up app, Clean Master, also reports that the video app surpassed five million uploads in the first 24 hours of its release.
Owner of digital communications agency Retroviral, Mike Sharman, says there was never a doubt that Video on Instagram would be well received. "With a captive audience of 130 million people, the service was always going to be successful. These initial results do suggest that adoption has been greater than most people expected."
Speedy success
Sharman says it is the simplicity Video on Instagram offers that has ensured almost instant success in an already popular, global service. "The growth in video adoption has been prolific with 100 hours of content being uploaded every minute to YouTube. Filters were the initial holy grail for the photo-sharing app, which has proven successful yet again with the video offering."
He adds that the editing of frames and the option to record up to 15 seconds of video gives the consumer more power to be in control of their content.
While Sharman says the digital future is impossible to predict, he does see a massive uptake of the service in the highly competitive video sphere. "My Magic 8 ball would like to see the options to embed Instagram video easier into blogs and other sites - then it will really begin to compete. It takes the Facebook/Google fight to a new level."
It was reported earlier this month that YouTube tripled advertising sales on mobile devices in the past six months, contributing an estimated $350 million to its revenue. YouTube also has over a billion unique users per month.
Twitter's Vine service was introduced in January and reported to have about 13 million users at the beginning of June. Vine, however, only allows users to upload six seconds of video material.
Sharman says the biggest challenge for the Instagram video service will be the rolling out of ads. "It is an inevitability, but the 'how' still remains to be seen. The in-video ad opportunities are endless but we all know how disruptive Google's YouTube pre-rolls are so perhaps a model similar to Facebook ads will be implemented."
He expects uploads to the service to continue to rise dramatically as not all 130 million users have posted their first videos. "As we have seen with YouTube, the amount of videos uploaded per minute continues to double almost every 18 months so there is a hunger for consumers to share their experiences via video.
"As data packages become cheaper, globally, compression technology allows us to share more rich media, smartphone adoption continues to grow and upload speeds increase with universal LTE [long-term evolution] adoption - we can certainly expect a lot more from Web/mobile video solutions."
Storage snag
Following the surge in video traffic, Clean Master found the video-sharing service negatively impacted on mobile devices' storage.
In the past week, Clean Master discovered that Instagram shot upward on its list of top cache-cluttering apps.
Clean Master says Instagram video users should be aware of the fact that each video viewed is downloaded and stored on the device, and that every video that is uploaded is automatically stored in three separate folders on a user's mobile device.
The app also warns that active users could surpass hundreds of megabytes a day of storage just by uploading or watching videos on Instagram. YouTube, on the other hand, does not store videos in the cache at all.
"When Instagram came out with an update that was so well received, we analysed their storage method and determined that some of the cache files the app generates are unnecessary for normal operation," says product manager of Clean Master, Adam Morley.
He adds that Clean Master released its own update just two days later to help keep users from cluttering up their phones while they watch new Instagram videos on the go.
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