Vine Will Survive!

Instagram is planning to launch video functionality in two days. But don’t go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine’s into the deadpool , let’s just calm it down a second. Vine has been declared by many as the “Instagram for Video.” Instagram’s own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after incumbents clobbered the space. What makes anyone think Instagram video would be any different? Vine launched in January of this year, just after the holidays, and spent a few months ramping up the user base before launching on Android a few weeks ago. At the time, Vine had 13 million downloads . Not too shabby for approximately five months of work. It took Vine a few days to swing to the top of the App Store , and the same was true on Google Play following the Android launch. When Instagram launched on Android, seventeen months after launching on iOS, it had around 30 million users. Obviously, users are a different metric than downloads, but you can see how Vine’s growth is relatively astounding given the timeframe. Especially when you factor in the less pointed evidence: Vine shares have surpassed Instagram shares on Twitter, for example, or even just hearing the term “Vine it” regularly in every day life. And having Twitter as a parent company doesn’t hurt either. Vine is already established, and better yet, making waves. Vine was used by the Tribeca Film Festival for a special #6SecFilm Contest. The app has been toyed with by designers and advertisers to build new interactive music videos. Brands love Vine because it lets products move in ways that Twitter and Facebook don’t. And Vine, of course, is still iterating quickly. We’ve seen the team respond to feature requests like the ability to use front-facing camera as well as rear-facing camera, and I wouldn’t be suprised t to see interesting additions like Voiceover or Animation pop up soon. Instagram is a powerful foe. The app has over 100 million users, and is now owned by the most powerful social network in the world. But this is far from the end of Vine. First, Vine is the end product of what Instagram was built to be. Vine skipped past still photos, and filters to make those photos (taken with bad mobile cameras) look prettier, and the slow grind of adding @mentions and photo maps and all those iterative feature tweaks. Instead, Vine launched as a true Instagram for video, which now has an active and seemingly happy user base. It’s not Twitter’s Cleaner fish , even if Twitter bought up the app and launched it into existence (unlike Instagram’s organic growth that was later bought up by Facebook). But where Instagram feels like a consumption app first (a time sink, almost), Vine doesn’t. Scrolling through my Vine stream is like having a hangover during an earthquake. Most often, it’s a lot of clanging and wind noise coupled with shaky video of my friends’ latest vacation. Still, Vines are excellent content. I am utterly pleased when I see a Vine.co link pop up in my Twitter stream, or surface in someone’s Facebook Timeline. I’m even more elated by a Vine.co link sent to my desktop. I like to watch the six-second thrill ride in all its glory. There’s something special about getting a glimpse (in video no less!) into someone’s world. Instagram is a different story. There was a time when I could scroll through Instagram for days. I’m not so entranced by the photo-sharing phenom anymore. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I get a sense of Instagram fatigue, both on the creative and consumptive side. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’m all hopped up on Vine. Maybe Instagram’s had its time? People like consuming video, sure, but it’s almost shocking how much people love making videos, too. Especially when given the right tools. When I see something cool happening out in the world, Instagram is no longer enough. I pray to the social media gods that this wondrous, hilarious, or downright insane scene before me will last the six seconds I need. I sense how strongly other people feel the same as I do. Instagram for video might offer a similar creative experience, but it’ll be hard to do so without copying Vine’s ability to string together multiple clips in such an easy manner. Easy is the key. And we all know what happens when Facebook tries to copy a threat. Messenger launched after WhatsApp and Viber were blowing up. Poke launched to (shamefully) combat Snapchat. And here comes Instagram, ready to take on Vine. But will Vine crumble where other competitors stood firm? Will it lay down and die? Oh no! Not Vine! Vine will survive.

Why Was Apple Late To T...

If there’s one striking thing about those PRISM slides, other than their hideous aesthetics, it’s that Apple’s allocated yellow oval, instead of a date, has the words “(added Oct 2012)” underneath it. That difference is most striking when you consider the fact that Apple competitor Microsoft cooperated with the government a full five years earlier. The company, which denies ever having heard of PRISM, released its FISA request numbers today, starting on December 1st, 2012, through this May 2013. Though it’s plausible that the government would not have disclosed the name of the program, the NYT confirmed Apple’s participation in a government surveillance network designed to make data collection more efficient for the NSA — whatever that entails, like “a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms.” From Claire Cain Miller’s article : While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so. The October 2012 date is notable as coming a year after the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Perhaps, because it is an interesting coincidence, it’s led to speculation that Steve Jobs resisted systematic data collection from the NSA until his death. That statement was echoed on the record by NeXt developer Andrew Stone, who told Cult of Mac, “Steve Jobs would’ve rather died than give into that, even though he had a lot of friends at the NSA. Microsoft caved in first, then everyone else. Steve would’ve just never done it.” The speculation, which I’ve heard from a couple of sources, has grounds. NeXT was publicly a vendor for the NSA and many other security agencies, and Jobs had many contacts at the agency who perhaps had offered him immunity. It could be that his connections, Apple’s brand popularity or straight-up his legend allowed him to escape Microsoft’s, which had been embroiled in a series of antitrust cases up until then, or Yahoo’s fates. All of these explanations make sense, though it could be something like the Twitter loophole that caused Apple’s tardiness. In Twitter’s case most of its data is public, so it’s not that big of a loss to the NSA until it becomes more of a communication node. Perhaps only recently did Apple collect the kinds of data the government would want, like the meta data around iMessage, which, though encrypted, doesn’t pass the “pud muddle” test. We will likely never know what Jobs did in those last few years as PRISM loomed ever larger, but whatever he did it looks like he held out as long as he could. The image of Steve Jobs playing chicken with Uncle Sam fits right into his myth. Even if it is just a myth.

Big Brands Are Growing ...

Here’s a fun comparison from Optimal , a social advertising and analytics startup: If you look at big brands on social networks, their following seems to be growing more quickly on Twitter than on Facebook. Optimal says it looked at the data from 4,330 brands, representing a total of 3.49 billion Facebook Likes and 595 million Twitter followers. Last week, those brands added 18.5 million new Likes and 4.5 million new followers — so on a percentage basis, their following grew 55 percent more quickly on Twitter than it did on Facebook. Now, you might quibble about whether pitting Facebook Likes against Twitter followers is a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but those are, ultimately, the main ways that businesses can count their following on each service. You could also point out the Twitter audience is still smaller than it is on Facebook — so even though Optimal said Twitter grew more quickly, the brands in question actually got more Facebook Likes than new Twitter followers. There are cases, however, where brands have a larger following on Twitter, full stop. Facebook-owned Instagram , for example, added the most Twitter followers of all the brands tracked — 279,500 new followers compared to 214,300 Likes. It has 21.3 million followers total and 4.6 million Facebook Likes. ( Facebook itself came in at No. 3 on Twitter growth, adding 167,400 new followers and 217,200 Likes.) Not that Optimal CEO Rob Leathern is really trying to pitch this as Twitter overtaking Facebook. “I think it does show that Twitter is growing and becoming more relevant for brands, too – in a sense ‘catching up’, but also it is different as well,” he told me via email. “A smaller but often more active audience.” Optimal also broke down the data by industry. Department and general merchandise stores had the highest growth rate on Twitter (2.01 percent, versus 0.59 percent on Facebook), while books and magazines had the lowest (0.46 percent, compared to 0.61 percent on Facebook). Leathern said this isn’t necessarily the first time Twitter has outpaced Facebook (in this very specific measurement) — it’s just “the first time we are looking at the data this way.”

Google to Claim 56% of ...

You are invited to partner with DM Confidential on many of the high-caliber programs that serve the customer acquisition industry. DM Confidential offers a wide range of resources, from publications to award programs to networking events to webinars. DM Confidential offers limited sponsorship opportunities online, in print and in-person, so please reserve your space early. According to eMarketer’s first-ever forecast on global digital and mobile ad revenues for major Internet companies , Google is set to nearly double its mobile ad revenue from $4.61 billion last year to $8.85 billion this year. If the company’s forecasts hold true, this would mean Google will claim 56.0 percent of the $15.82 billion in total worldwide mobile ad revenue in 2013. Facebook is expected to be No. 2 with $2.04 billion (12.9 percent) in mobile ad revenue this year, while Pandora is expected to rake in about $400 million (2.5 percent). YP is expected to account for $380 million (2.4 percent) in mobile ad revenue in 2013, while Twitter is expected to account for $310 million (2.0 percent) in mobile ad revenue. eMarketer notes that Google, Facebook and Twitter “account for a consolidating share of mobile advertising revenues worldwide,” while other players (e.g., YP, Pandora, Apple, Millennial Media) are seeing their shares decline. According to the IDC , mobile ad spend is expected to rise 55-65 percent this year to finish at $7 billion in the U.S. The post Google to Claim 56% of Worldwide Mobile Ad Revenue in 2013 appeared first on DM Confidential .

Rumor: Word On The Vine...

It’s a slow morning so let’s take a look at a rumor that may be of interest. TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook will announce that it is introducing a video element of the service later this week. We’ve been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week. Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely. On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine effect. We are still looking for more information because we understand that Facebook has not wanted the details of June 20 to leak out — so this could be an intentional blind alley. But if the Instagram video report is true, you could say the event invite itself — sent by snail mail, coffee cup stain charmingly in one corner — is a red herring of its own. So let’s play along and say that Instagram is indeed adding video to its offering. The logical conclusion is that Vine is in the head of the folks at Facebook enough that they feel a response to the Twitter video offering is necessary. Right now though it’s a rumor. But doesn’t it make sense for Instagram to be headed in this direction, if not now in the very near future? The last thing Facebook can afford is to have the 11th hour before their IPO deal that was cut by Mark Zuckerberg last year languish behind a relative newcomer. Will Instagram be even more attractive to end users if video were part of the offering? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.