By now you’ve definitely heard that on Tuesday, Instagram launched Hyperlapse, a new app that makes it super easy to create high-quality time lapse videos on your phone. In true Instagram form, Hyperlapse is sleek, fun, and straightforward.
When you open the app, you have a camera view with a record button. Tap the button once to begin recording, and once to stop. From there, you can edit the speed of your Hyperlapse video, save, and share! As Gizmodo aptly put it, apps don’t come much more minimal than this. Of course, Hyperlapse works seamlessly with Instagram. When you publish to IG, you can apply filters or trim the video down to 15 seconds in length (despite there being no time limit for Hyperlapse, Instagram still requires that your videos are 15 seconds or less).
One of my favorite things about an exciting new app launch is the extremely creative people in the social media community who are always so quick to master the new technology (best of Hyperlapse videos have been popping up all over the blogs). As a social media professional, I also get really excited to see which brands are early adapters to the new trend. To get in on the fun, be sure to check out the #hyperlapse hashtag on Instagram to take in the full scale of the excitement around this app’s launch.
With this much hype, criticism is inevitable. FastCompany has us wondering why HyperLapse is even its own app at all, instead of living within Instagram, and how this will affect the new app’s shelf life. Was Kevin Systrom feeling pressure from Zuck to push out a new product?
Because it’s a product of Instagram, and makes a functionality that was once much more laborious super easy, I have a feeling that Hyperlapse has longevity – whether we’re using it for fun or incorporating it into our clients’ social media strategies. But, even if we do tire of it quickly, Instagram keeps giving us reasons why they’re our preferred social network, the most important being that they’re enabling the creatives.