Video is the social dog that has not yet barked

Last week I attended Mobile World Congress (MWC) where one common theme was the normalisation of short form video. It is what links all new platforms and many emerging behaviours and firms together. 4G and cheap Android powered devices are changing consumptive and creative patterns rapidly. Video is the social dog that has not yet barked.

Like ecommerce, it takes a long time to be normal. What’s next? It’s already here! It’s just not “normal” for most people yet.

Vine
Vine is a social media sharing app that allows users to create short looping videos up to seven seconds across various social media sites. After being bought by Twitter in late 2012 it has shot to success and had a number of successful commercial uses over the last few years: Oreo Cookies, Columbia Records, Gap, and even Dunkin Donuts. The last company became the first enterprise to use a ‘sing Vine’ as an entire television advert!

Snapchat
Snapchat is a phone app that allows users to take photos, videos and create animations or drawings that can be sent out to a controlled list of contacts. You are able to set how long the recipient is able to view the snap up to max of 10 seconds, After that, the message disappears and is deleted from the recipient’s device.

Over the past 12 months it has exploded into mainstream media with a recent report saying 77% of US college students use it daily. However, there has been some controversy around the service and its lack of security features. It is still proving to be a strong new social platform for brands to jump on the bandwagon. Most noticeable has been Taco Bell, Audi and most recently HBO’s promotion of Girls and Channel 4′s Hollyoaks, all offering additional, between-episodes content.

Instagram
Instagram is a photo sharing and social networking site that allows users to capture content in a square format and apply a number of filters, to modify images which has became a signature for the service. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram (at the time it was a team of seven with 120 million active users) for $1bn.

In June 2013 video capability of up to 15 seconds was added, with some seeing it as an attempt to battle with the growing success of Twitter’s Vine. The demographic of Instagram is slightly older than Vine and Snapchat, and has therefore had great success with more premium clothing brands embracing the medium such as Burberry, Nike and Go pro! all allowing them direct channels to consumers’ devices.

Wibbitz
Wibbitz is an up and coming company from MWC. Its technology allows automatic transformation of text-based web content such as articles and blog posts into beautiful short video summaries. It has a clean and minimalistic feel to it and caters to this growing trend of quick consumption of media on the go by turning readers into viewers. The company has come out of the rapidly expanding start-up revolution happening in Israel –the fastest growing start-up market in the world! It has huge potential for brands to create more engaging rich video content from their existing online presence.

By DMA guest blogger Jai Kotecha, Associate Director, Social@OgilvyUK