At first glance, it seems like Instagram has made a good business move in its decision to bring video to the popular photo sharing service. Facebook announced today that in the first 24 hours of the feature’s release, Instagram users already uploaded a whopping five million videos.
Instagram announced yesterday that it was updating the service to let users upload short 15 second videos, similiar in style to those made with Twitter’s Vine service. Company representatives stated today that if you were to watch every single video that was created in the first 24 hours, it would take you a full year to watch them all.
The company also revealed an interesting statistic, announcing that the the new service hit its most active point following the end of last night’s NBA Final. Following the game, users were uploading over 40 hours of those 3 to 15 second videos every single minute. This shows that users are already taking to the service to use it in conjunction with special events.
What will be really interesting to see now is if Instagram will be able to maintain this popularity, and whether it or Vine will be able to be seen as a clear winner in a few months time.