Over the weekend, Facebook sent out invites to a press event that will be held at their headquarters at One Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California on Thursday.
Details about what Facebook is planning to unveil have remained a mystery. The invitation, sent through the physical mail service rather than e-mail, contained a coffee cup stain and an invite to see the result of "a small team working on a big idea."
TechCrunch reported on Monday that a source leaked the information that Facebook will be announcing a short video sharing service for Instagram, which will allow five to 10 second videos.
It's unclear as of now whether or not this source is reliable. Facebook has kept things like this announcement a well-kept secret in the past and could be using this "leak" as a red herring TechCrunch warns readers.
It would make sense though; Twitter's Vine app has been a hugely popular success since it's launch in January. The Vine app lets users post six second videos for iOS and Android devices. Users have found Vine to be an acceptable way to share moments from their life, make funny videos or create works of art. Facebook, who purchased Instagram for $1 billion earlier last year, would be smart to respond to Vine's popularity and try and combat it with their own video sharing service. Perhaps the established brand of Instagram will be enough to make users switch from the Twitter friendly Vine to the Facebook Friendly Instagram video.
However, in the past few weeks, Vine has been surpassing Instagram in shares on Twitter. This could have everything to do with the fact that Vine videos can stream directly in user's Twitter feed whereas they need to click an external link to open Instagram photos. Twitter updated its photo sharing service earlier this year to allow users to run their photos through Instagram-style filters right in the Twitter application. This too could contribute to Vine's shares trumping Instagram.
