Is Twitter’s new Vine feature the ticket for moving up the food chain in fluid media?
“Vines to the Sky” – Matt Krack, digital photo, 2012
If you don’t know what Vine is, it is a lot like and a lot unlike Twitter itself. Instead of a text and links only format of a tweet, a Vine video is limited to 6 seconds of audio+video footage. Outside of choosing which 6 seconds of reality you can consecutively squash into your file, no editing is allowed. Once the indication bar tells you that your footage has hit 6-seconds, you can either send it or delete it. Because Vine is only enabled on iOS for the moment (<get it there and follow me @mkrack <WARNING- I CAN BE A HAM>), at least that 6 seconds is in sweet High-def format, the standard for iPhones. Speaking of Apple, it has been purported that the tech behemoth has been in secret talks with the Twitter camp since July 2012. With Apple being a lover of rich media applications, is Vine ready to soon be unleashed on a much wider scale than just the early adopters of the service? My thought is perhaps it will never make it to Android or any other non-Apple platform, but they might “share” with others later on.
It’s been over a month since the release and no non-Apple developers have been able to pounce on – I’m calling it for Vine now – the hottest new platform since Pinterest, though porn posters have threatened its long-term viability. My confidence lies in Twitter Co. to figure out how to suppress and weed out the vast majority of those posts by creating slight posting delays for suspect posts to be able run them through some sort of recognition algorithm perhaps. Anyone else have ideas on how Twitter could keep porn from running rampant over Vine? I also think if Apple is really going to step in on this one, they are the de-facto experts in creating a safe and fuzzy environment for everyone.
Vine is also competing against a plethora of platforms already out there such as Branch, which is already on iOS and Android, not to mention a whole host of other thornily-competing apps and platforms.
So, what do you think?
Runwithit Media 