What is Vine?
Vine is a new iPhone app from Twitter which is all about video – short video. Six seconds to be precise. The way it works is simple: you don't click a button to record like a normal video camera, you have to touch your thumb to the screen to record and hold it there. This way it encourages you to film multiple things, play around with stop motion and be generally a bit more creative.
It seems to be aimed at people sharing little snippets of their life (or whatever they want, to be honest) in a kind of Instagrammy way. In fact Instagram is probably a good comparison to make; the layout is very similar except there are no 'vintage' filters to hipsterfy your vids.
It's been a bit buggy so far, people reporting crashes and certain integration issues, but this is to be expected in its infancy. I'd imagine it'll be pimping with bug fixes before long.
It's only on iPhone for the moment (link here) but an Android version is coming soon, apparently.
Instagram vs Vine (or Facebook vs Twitter)
Vine was bought by Twitter a while back and has been created in partnership with them. As you can imagine then, it syncs perfectly with Twitter with the videos playing inside the Twitter interface and also making them embeddable on other sites. There was a bit of argy-bargy when Vine first launched as it originally allowed you to find Facebook friends on the service, before Zuckerburg and co. removed the api to do this. Ouch. A similar thing happened with Instagram last year, so don't expect your Vines to be looking swish in your Facebook News Feed any time soon…
Brands on Vine
As with any shiny new toy, a few brands were extremely quick off the mark to start messing around with it. There are some examples (some better than others) here. It's a bit restricting for brands at the moment as you are not able to upload previously taken clips to use, they have to be recorded fresh off the bat. NBC have tried to get around this by seemingly filming a screen playing a news story, but it looks a bit naff in my opinion – however full marks for trying to use it in this way, genuinely useful, I think.
What we think
As with any new thing it's going to take time to see exactly what the uptake is for something like this. Are people going to go for video in the same way they did for Instagram? It's hard to say, but you certainly have to put more thought into making a Vine than you do an Instagram.
The manual nature of the service means that it is a bit more restrictive for brands however it could be a great tool for showing product releases, interviews, stop motion thingys or generally reporting in a succinct way on live action events.
It's impossible to start thinking about direct strategies for Vine at the moment, however it could potentially be included into part of an existing Twitter strategy, adding another element to content creation.
PS. Apparently it's also going to revolutionise 'micro-porn'. As you were.
Get sucked into the vortex of other people's lives in six second instalments here.
