Instagram, you have heard of it. The photo sharing site with 100 million plus users, that Facebook bought for $1 billon, right? Touted as the app that helps you “Capture and Share the World's Moments” Instagram is an easy, fast and fun way to share your real-time happenings with friends and family.

I got on Instagram recently (www.Instagram.com/CITYPEEKpatti) because I was intrigued by how the younger generation was using it. People in bars, restaurants, happenings would be taking photos, enhancing the light quality, turning color shots into black and white and even framing them. Then, the pictures would be posted on facebook (remember, they bought the company) and eventually twitter, foursquare and more.

That takes me as to why I really like the Instagram social medium tool. It’s about time management and sharing across multiple social medium platforms. Recently, after sitting in on a panel of some of the world’s top Chefs in Aspen F&W Classic, I started playing around with Vine, a new app for sharing short, looping videos of only six seconds. Vine is owned by Twitter and enables its users to create and post video clips. But with a maximum length of 6 seconds, although it is easy to use, it is very hard to capture much in such a short period.  But it can be done, an example of one I made is here, note, you have the option to turn the sound on or off. https://vine.co/v/hBJvwH7d6VW .

Taking the best of what others sites are doing and integrating it into its own fabric, Instagram c/o Facebook just unveiled a video making tool to its photo sharing app. The biggest difference vs Vine is Facebook owns the tool, not Twitter and videos are 15 seconds. It’s a sign of the times when a 15 second timeframe is about all our modern attention spans can take. Now you can take a video, you can choose a special filter to transform its look and feel, then post to Instagram. Conveniently, you can also simultaneously  share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, email and geo-targeting, check-insite Foursquare with Instagram.   An example of one I took at recent My Thai Chef competition is: https://instagram.com/p/bEmSJvq4gS/ .

Both tools allow you to save video to your smart devices camera roll. Whereas Vine loops the video, allowing it to repeat until you stop, Instagram Video does not. Vine also allows video embedding to ease with posting on your own blog, website, etc. Sorry, but  neither Vine nor Instagram will let you pull video from your camera roll. Both force you shoot your Vineable or Instagrammable video within the respective apps. One thing that's a plus with Instagram is that many people are familiar with its interface, even though Vine is very easy to use and was the first to offer the video feature.

Whichever you choose, survey says, that videos have an 80% open rate vs a static photo or no photo at all. Pictures do paint 1000 words, just the content is what can set you, your business and your presentation apart. Be creative, try it out and please share your videos with me. Oh yeah, did we mention it’s free? Find me on social media by searching CITYPEEK Patti and let me know how it is going.

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