Vine: Twitter's Instagram in Video Space

Twitter launched its new social network app, Vine a few days ago. Probably you don't know what it is judging by its name and that’s what this post is for: give you a general idea on how this new social app works.It’s very much like Instagram, if you have ever used it. Instead of still pictures, users upload videos and they are of fixed duration, 6 seconds. That would be boring if it’s just a 6-second video without any fun part. It actually can be composed of many parts, like a mini film.

The start-up screen is very nice with the hot balloon flying across the screen. You can sign in using your twitter account if you own one. Otherwise email registration is always available.

You’ll be automatically following editor’s pick once it’s done.

The menu is pretty much like Instagram's. You can explore others' profiles using hashtag or username. Activity page monitors your received likes and also activities of users you are following.

Then it’s your own time to shoot a mini video! The walk-through is pretty helpful for creating your first post. By pressing the screen, you start to film and pause when your finger leaves the screen. So a 6-second video can be made up of many small chunks.

Some of my thoughts a few hours after installing Vine: 

1. You can use Vine both for daily recording (plain video) and creativity. Editor's Pick shows how we could play with Vine. But I still find it not so easy to be 'creative'. It may take quite a while to shoot a great 6-second video.

2. The video loading sometimes could be slow, even using WiFi. This could be something worth working on as it is a huge turn-off if users keep seeing loading. 

3. There is no video filter yet, so videos look quite plain now. I believe they may add this feature in the future.

Needless to say, Vine will create another wave of hype in the social network space due to its fun and innovative nature and its huge base of twitter users. Although it recently has encountered Facebook’s unfriendly rejection due to privacy concerns and pornography issues, these only make it hit the headlines and get more public attention. Of course, a long-term success still lies on twitter’s measure to deal with its privacy issues and content control.  

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