Facebook 'Big Event' Livestream: Is Social Media Giant Unveiling New Video-Sharing App?

Facebook sent invitations to a big announcement earlier this week. Invitations went out to press through the physical mail rather than e-mail and informed readers the company has been working on a "big idea" and invited people to join them at their headquarters at One Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California at 12:45 (ET) today to hear about it. The event will be live streamed on Facebook HERE.

No sooner did news of Facebook's new event become known that TechCrunch reported a source had leaked information that the company will be adding a new feature to Instagram, the popular photo sharing and editing app that the company purchased earlier last year for $1 billion. In response to the popularity of Twitter's new six-second video sharing application "Vine," TechCrunch's source leak said Facebook will be unveiling a brief video sharing service for Instagram.

If Facebook's plan is to put Instagram in direct competition with Vine, it might not be the worst move the company has ever made. After all, Vine is still new and, although it is growing in popularity, it has a long way to go. Instagram, on the other hand, is a well-established application that many people already have on their phones. If short video sharing is going to be the next commodity of social applications, opening it up to Instagram would mean the difference between users having to learn a new app and simply having a new feature on their old one.

However, in recent weeks, Vine has been surpassing Instagram in shares on Twitter. While this could be a sign of the video sharing application's growing popularity, it could also be a result of Vine being a Twitter-friendly app. Videos on Vine can be uploaded and embedded directly in people's tweets. Instagram, on the other hand, cannot be tweeted so easily as people have to open a third party website from the tweet.

There are other rumors circulating as to what Facebook could be unveiling later today including an RSS reader. All mysteries will finally be cleared up today at 12:45 when all eyes will be on the popular social networking site.