Thanks for the instant memories.

Nowadays, it’s all about livin’ in the fast lane. If you’re in a rush, don’t worry. This is a quick catch up on social media video—it’s so fast we could fit it in a 60 second Instagram story.

Not so long ago experts were touting video as the future of content marketing. While they weren’t wrong about the importance of video in our promotional strategies, I wonder if many had anticipated the unique turn video has taken towards ubiquity—being ever present yet ephemeral.

Instagram launches stories.

Probably one of the most talked about updates in a while is Instagram’s new Stories update. The Facebook owned app released the feature at the start of August—the update ‘letting you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile’.

The stories you snap…I mean…gram…appear at the top of your feed, along with the stories of profiles you follow, in the form of a slideshow—and they only last for 24 hours.

If that sounds similar to another app (cough, Snapchat) you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking there was a glitch in the Matrix. Many see this move as a full-frontal attack on Snapchat’smarket share, particularly after Snapchat rejected Facebook’s $3B offer to purchase their app in 2013.

But according to with Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, this is not the case:

“[Snapchat] deserve all the credit, people invent formats…and those formats proliferate. I think what you see is that every company…adopts the best of the best formats…you can’t just recreate another product. But you can say ‘what’s really awesome about a format? And does it apply to our network?’”

Regardless of the similarities, there are marked differences between Snaps and Stories. While you can draw, emoji and caption your Stories, no filters are currently enabled, and no paid Stories advertising is available for the time being.

Introducing Instagram Stories from Instagram.

Instagram also hosts an older demographic than Snapchat, which will inevitably dictate the features developed moving forward. For a more in-depth look into Instagram Stories read on here.

Snapchat gets spectacled.

While everyone in tech-land has been reeling over Instagram Stories, Snapchat has been busy with updates of their own.

Not only can you now share videos and images straight from your camera roll, and save your Snaps to your permanent memories; Snapchat has surprised us all by releasing their first wearable tech product.

Branded as ‘Snap Inc’, the app has designed Spectacles—Wi-Fi connected, one-size-fits all sunglasses that allow wearers to record 10 second or 30 second videos. All with a simple tap of the frame rims.

Videos are captured with a 115 degree wide view lens, in circle format, but can be ‘watched full-screen on a phone in any orientation…and wirelessly offloaded to a phone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth’, according to TechCrunch.

Snap Inc’s Spectacles come in black, teal and coral, are rechargeable and will be priced at around USD$130. Their release comes with plenty of speculation about whether they will succeed where Google Glass failed.

At this point it’s difficult to guess if they will remain novelty, or whether updates could deem them an every-day user product.

Facebook introduces Instant Videos to Messenger

In addition to Live and 360, Facebook has introduced Instant Video. The middle ground between messaging and video calling your friends, Instant Video’s main intention is to ‘bring your conversations to life…seamlessly and instantly, by seeing each other face-to-face’, according to Facebook’s Newsroom update.

You can now share live, smaller videos—as well as chat in Messenger once you and your friend are both active in the window.

An interesting update, Instant Videos provides potential benefits to conversations that require the simplicity of facial expression over rushed and typo-riddled replies.

For best results it is recommended that you both have the latest version of Messenger and/or iOS software update.

Since Facebook’s revelations for Messenger earlier this year, things are a little quiet on the new features front. However, we’ve heard from around the interwebs that Messenger may be trialing photos and videos with stickers, text and drawing that—you guessed it—expire after 24 hours.

Much like Instagram Stories, Messenger’s temporary IMs will appear at the top of the app for everyone to see. A unique difference, however, includes themed filters that players can add to their messages. So far this snappy add-on has only been spotted in Poland’s Messenger Day feature, but the digital giant are well known for testing small before rolling changes out for all.

That wraps up the latest and greatest in social media video updates. Going by the current speed of new updates, features and products—we’ll be checking in on this topic again very, very soon.