I've been tinkering with this new video update to Instagram with varying degrees of success. While I have to agree the overall UI (User Interface) is straightforward, there are five steps that could be added to make it REALLY good.

A timeline counter on each clip.

When you press and hold the shutter button it starts the slider moving across until released. You then have to guess if this a 3 second or 4 second clip you recorded before calculating how much 'reel' you have left. A time-length digit over each clip would take away that uncertainty.

Sound: A fade in/out & mute button

These could appear as 'drag-handles at the beginning and end of your recorded video during the edit process. You then drag them in from either end to fade in or fade out the sound if you wanted. Great for recording in windy conditions. By clicking the 'mute' button it would have the reverse effect ie fading OUT the sound to mute.

Music: A simple music overlay feature.

A few of weeks ago Vizify announced their little 'Twitter movie' addition to the family. In essence it takes some key metrics of your Twitter feed and sets it to a little music. You can see mine here. When you edit your Twitter movie, the music option offers 5 or 6 free themes with three variants in each. Just click to select. Even better would be to incorporate this into the fade button mentioned above.

Add clip from Photo Album.
Very often I have short snippets recorded on my phone that just need a quick and simple way to share with friends. On the iPhone, that usually means uploading to YouTube. Just like the photo feature in Instagram, why not add in the ability to select video from camera album. You then choose the movie and voila, it loads in Instagram. If the selected video is longer than 15 seconds then just put a simple drag handle indicating which 15 seconds you want to keep and it cuts away the rest.

A camera icon for stills & one for video would save time.

One-step recording.
This is my biggest UI bugbear! The interface is designed with one or two steps too many to get recording in my opinion. You have to open the app, click the 'camera' icon, THEN click the 'video' icon. The number of times I have clicked record on the Camera button, only to take a random snap, before clicking that video button to get me going. The action I wanted to record is invariably over by then. If two of the icons on the home screen were combined into one, there would be room for one 'Camera' icon in blue and one 'Video' icon, perhaps in red. Much simpler.

In case you're wondering why I believe Social Business to be absolutely crucial to your marketing strategy, just think about this: In the very near future (think months), Social Business will just be referred to as Business, simply because everyone will be doing it as a normal course of their communication strategy.

Apple's iPhone is a great example to illustrate what I mean.

Steve Jobs was laughed at for predicting the end of physical buttons back in 2007.

When it first came out, the handset was referred to by the industry as a 'Smartphone'. As more competitors rushed to catch up, the smartphone became more universal. Along with Samsung Galaxy's, Nokias and Androids, today they are just referred to as 'phones'. (Funnily enough the old style mobiles are now called 'Feature Phones'. How ironic.)

Don't believe me?...

Today, most phones sold in the UK look like this:

So what does all this mean for your business? Well just remember that pretty much every chef, every waiter and every manager in your business has one of these in their pocket.

As do most of your customers.

Now THAT is a massive opportunity that Social Networking can give your business. You can't run from it, so you'd better embrace it before everyone else does.

What are you waiting for?