By: iPadfanzz staff on April 11, 2013
It took only three months for Vine to become the top free app on iTunes. Vine is more of an attempt to nurture the craze for animated GIFs, most prominently evidenced on image-heavy mini-blogging site Tumblr, as well as to become the Instagram of video. Here users share video clips, instead of text and pictures. The app competes against the likes of apps such as Viddy and Cinemagram that are vying to be the next Instagram.
As an iOS app that lets you tweet a looping 6-second video. Taking snippets of video is quite easy as pressing anywhere on the screen. The app meter measures exactly the six seconds of frame. The concise nature of a six second video is extremely good for Twitter and Instagram addicts, along with all the meme and gif lovers.
The sign-up is easy as you can sign in with your Twitter account, or create a new Vine account using an email address. Conveniently, you don't need to actually provide your Twitter credentials, the app can take them from your iPhone's Settings.
The Vine has a well-designed and a simple interface. On the top panel above the feed you’ll find two buttons — on the left Home, and on the right a movie camera. The Home button option will take you to Explore, Activity, and Profile. Each user has a profile page, and Vine's resembles Twitters. At the top there is user’s photo, a text area for inspirational self-description and a big Follow button.
In the Explore page, you could see Editor's Picks, Popular Now, and All Posts (presumably by recency). At the bottom half of the page you’ll see colorful Windows 8-like tiles which allows you to browse hashtags, such as #magic, #travel, and #sports. You need to remember that you'll only be able to see all your own and contacts' Vine videolets in the app or in your Twitter feed, and nowhere else. The videos play on the Twitter website and in the Twitter iOS apps.
Shooting a video is simple. Point the camera and touch the screen. As long as the finger remains in contact, the video camera rolls. Lift your finger and it stops. Continue until you’ve shot for six seconds.
Once, done with the shooting, press the Next button to add a caption for your tiny video compilation, choose a hash tag, and decide where to share it. Sharing options are Vine, Twitter, and Facebook. That’s it! The final Vine clips automatically play when embedded in tweets, but their sound is turned off by default. The clips also play within Twitter's official mobile app.
You’d be thinking what you can show in just six seconds? You’d be amazed at the creativity of people using the app as there are loads of video being posted on a daily basis showcasing everyday activities, office environment, sharing a football match, making of an omelet, wedding reception, outdoor hiking, etc. Just as Twitter’s 140-character limit forces people to write more efficiently, Vine goads you into looking more closely at the world, to identify visuals that get to the point. You can visit vine.co/blog to see some examples.
What’s good about Vine is that it lets you start and stop the camera multiple times during the six-second shooting spree. This enables you to build little stop-action animations out of real world people and objects.
While the app is currently only available on the iPhone and iPod touch, and free to download in the App Store, Twitter says it's working to make it available for other platforms.
Vine app a good tool for marketing
Here are some quick ideas we've come up with for using Vine videos in your social media marketing…
Quick, bite-sized product demos
Short, funny clips to showcase the personality behind your brand
Sneak peeks to promote an upcoming event or webinar (e.g. speaker clips)
Clips showing off awesome new gear/swag/products in action
"Behind the scenes" looks at your office to show your company's culture and the people behind your brand
Quick highlight reels
Clips highlighting PR initiatives.
