In a bid to innovatively reach new audiences on social media platforms, BBC is experimenting a new service called Instafax. Launched on the 16th of January 2014, Instafax is a short-form video news service delivered to Instagram users.
The experiment which consists a daily dose of three 15-second videos uploaded a day, intended to serve as a roundup of the day’s news, will be for one month.
Instafax can be described a modern version of BBC’s former Ceefax service – the world’s first teletext service that ran on UK television until 2012
Steve Herrmann, head of BBC News Online, said the trial was a response to changing audience patterns after monthly figures for December, showed mobile and tablet consumption had overtaken desktop for the first time.
According to The Guardian, the BBC is not the first to be testing the value of social media platforms for video news reporting. NowThis News created Instagram videos in this format since 2012 and it specialises in short-form visuals for social networks including Facebook, Vine, Twitter and Snapchat.
