Boomerang is a new app from Instagram that lets you capture quick video loops, or as the company puts it, “turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected.”
Shockingly, the app is immediately available for both iOS and Android rather than one or the other. This is always nice in a new product launch, yet still all too uncommon.
Introducing Boomerang from Instagram from Instagram on Vimeo.
“Capture a friend jumping off a diving board, defying physics as she flies back and forth through the air,” Instagram says in a blog post. “Transform an ordinary selfie with your friends into a funny video. Get that exact moment your friend blows out his birthday candles, then watch them come back to life again and again.”
“Press a button and the app does the rest,” the company explains. “Boomerang takes a burst of photos and stitches them together into a high-quality mini video that plays forward and backward. Shoot in portrait or landscape. Share it on Instagram. Boomerang automatically saves it to your camera roll. We’re inspired by the visual stories you tell on Instagram. With looping videos and Hyperlapse, you experiment with motion in new and exciting ways. Now, with Boomerang, we can’t wait to see what you’ll create next.”
The videos don’t appear in a feed within the Boomerang app itself, but can be shared to other places, such as Facebook and Instagram itself.
The product is fairly reminiscent of Google’s auto-awesome feature that stitches together photos to make animated gif-like quick-videos or the Live Photos feature Apple recently announced.
It shouldn’t be long before we start seeing brands get in on the fun.
Images via Instagram, Google Play