What Journalists need to know about Instagram Video

Two things:

1. Don’t read any more posts with headlines like this one – because nobody really knows yet
2. Get out there, experiment with it and find your own uses for it.

Here’s why:

Social media tools like this take a long time to find their footing and become useful. Facebook existed for years without the news feed that we now think is the heart of the service. Instagram started off as a game called Burbn. Twitter’s hashtags, @replies and retweets? All ideas created by the users and initially resisted by Twitter itself. Nobody knows exactly what a new tool will become in its early stages – least of all the people creating the service.

Look at Twitter’s similar video service Vine: it’s been out for five months, and only now are interesting uses of it beginning to emerge. Look at the work my friends at Brilliant Noise are doing with Vine, for example. That comes from experimenting with an open mind, not reading click-bait posts in the first few days.