TECH TUESDAY – I heard about the app Vine, and it’s just about to blow my mind.
In fact, I did more than hear about it.
I downloaded it, signed up instantly with my Twitter account and began making strangely compelling, looping videos.
#bangkok vine.co/v/bJZJX9zbVBO
— Byron Perry (@Byron_Perry) January 27, 2013
Everybody’s talking about the app, which only launched on Jan. 24. By Jan. 31, its usage numbers had doubled those of the next-most popular video-sharing app SocialCam and dwarfed also-rans like Viddy and Cinemagram. A porn scandal where a graphic sex video was inserted in users’ feeds as an “Editor’s Pick” only served to heighten the chatter surrounding the app. (Clever PR perhaps?)
It’s one of the first apps lately that presents an original idea at its core and it’s the most and easy-to-use and fun app I’ve fooled around with since Instagram.
So what does it do?
With Vine, you record video by pressing down on the screen – when you lift your thumb, the recording stops and you can move on to another subject and record that. It’s on-the-fly, fast-cut editing.
In the truest testament yet to our generation’s dwindling attention span, Vine limits the length of the video to six-seconds and then loops that clip infinitely. The result is hypnotic, creepy, weird, and often hilarious.
The fact that Vine was created by Twitter – possibly the best built-in PR/marketing machine a new product could ask for – has certainly helped its meteoric rise, but the awesomely browsable user interface and the addictiveness of the clips have played a huge part as well. Twitter wrote on its blog that it hopes that the brevity of the platform “inspires creativity” and indeed Vine seems to be dominated by artsy types and early adopting media company accounts at the moment.
The platform most easily lends itself to stop-motion techniques like this:
Dying for a coffee. #magic #vineart #pleaselike vine.co/v/bJwnA9qjYiH
— Ian Padgham (@origiful) January 29, 2013
But some have already explored the app’s narrative potential further. Actor Adam Goldberg (remember the nerd who gets his ass kicked in Dazed and Confused?) has gone all-out, creating a wig-wearing weirdo version of himself that creeps out his girlfriend in more and more elaborate ways (turn on sound for the full experience).
Home. vine.co/v/b1KMrAFMd5T
— Adam Goldberg (@TheAdamGoldberg) February 1, 2013
One cool thing that Vine is already doing is allowing clips to be turned into sharable GIFs, and Lord knows that GIFs never get old. But Vines themselves, as the videos created on the service are called, have been blocked from being shared within Facebook, a detrimental but foreseeable competitive move from the Twitter competitor.
The big question is really this: Does Vine have staying power? Looping 6-second videos could eventually get annoying and tired. People are loving it after two weeks, but will they be loving it after two years?
I’d be lying if I told you that I knew the answer… but I’m pretty infatuated with Vine and don’t foresee myself stopping using it any time soon (within the next two weeks).
