It’s not a photo. It’s not a gif. It’s a Boomerang.
Instagram rolls out a new video app called Boomerang, which will produce gif-style clips at the click of a button. Boomerang takes a one-second burst of five photos to create a mini video loop which can be shared to the main Instagram app and Facebook.
“Capture a friend jumping off a diving board, defying physics as she flies back and forth through the air,” the Facebook-owned app said in a blog post.
Boomerang bears some resemblance to “Vine,” a six-second video app owned by Twitter , and the new Apple “Live Photos” feature on the iPhone 6S.
Boomerang isn’t Instagram’s first standalone app. This year, the photo-and-video sharing service launched the app “Layout” for making photo collages. Last August, the social media created ”Hyperlapse” for making time lapse videos using stabilisation technology. And last July, Instagram debuted a Snapchat-like photo sharing app called “Bolt”.