Instagram for Video: Searching for the Next Big Thing

This post contains excerpts from Eli's original story published at SearchEngineWatch on 5/22/2012

Facebook’s IPO last month was a major milestone event for the social media industry and while there may be ups and downs on the stock price, its rising tide has the ancillary benefit of lifting all other boats in the social media space.

Instagram is the biggest story as of late, with its lofty $1 billion acquisition by Facebook. For a 3-year old company with no profits, it’s an eye-popping number -- but one of its core value propositions is passionate usage via mobile devices. Mobile is quickly becoming the next frontier in social: the average person spends more time on favorite social networks on mobile devices than on PCs.

While Instagram did not invent social photo sharing, it did reinvent the experience and help it resonate on an emotional level among users by capturing a certain style --even nostalgia -- with its various photo treatments. Given Instagram’s success, the tech community is on the lookout for a similar evolution in social video-sharing.

Most of us are probably familiar with social video sharing, even if we don’t recognize all of the services rapidly entering this space. The main ones popping up in my Facebook Newsfeed of late are Socialcam, Viddy, and Chill. The simple apps can be downloaded to your smartphone, and you can go from recording a video, to editing it with cool music and a retro look, to posting it to your social media feeds instantaneously. It’s no surprise that many of these catchy videos are quickly going viral—like the scuba diver-meets-shark example below.

Based on how ubiquitous these services have become almost overnight, we can expect the venture capital money will flow in and some leading internet companies might explore acquisition.

As we saw with Instagram, establishing a leadership position is critical. If your offering is somewhat similar to others (think Hipstamtic to Instagram), then which metrics are most important? While active users are the ultimate test, in the gold rush days of a new market it’s critical to acquire potential users, making app downloads and registered users especially important. Although you can always increase your user base organically, there is no substitute for press and celebrity adoption to drive huge spikes in interest. If you’ve ever wondered why public figures get paid thousands of dollars for product-related tweets, or PR professionals fall all over themselves to get a write up in the right publication, the Socialcam and Viddy search data should answer your question.

Prior to April 2012, there was almost no discernible search interest in Socialcam or Viddy. But then Facebook announced its Instragram acquisition on April 9th, pushing every reporter and pundit to speculate about the next billion-dollar startup. It took about 5 minutes before stories on Gizmodo, NYTimes, and CNET popped up about Socialcam, and you can see the impact that media attention had on branded search volume for “Socialcam” according to Search Planner data:

Although Socialcam got the most of the post-Instagram press, Viddy benefited from direct celebrity investment and even indirect endorsement. The largest spike in search activity coincided with major celebrities announcing that they were investing in Viddy, including Shakira and Jay-Z, as well as an indirect endorsement by Mark Zuckerberg signing up for the service and posting a video of his dog, Beast.

Search offers a strong reflection of the media and cultural buzz that surrounds ‘the next big thing.’ And while search can help direct new users to these services, whether or not they fulfill that promise has much more to do with the quality of the experience and meeting the needs of the customer. So, will SocialCam or Viddy be the one eventually anointed the Instagram of Video? Only time – and search – will tell.

For more search insights from Comscore Media Evangelist Eli Goodman, check out Search Strategies for Smartphones vs TabletsandSocial SEO: How to Optimize your Social Presence for Search.