Twitter enters a brave new – GIF friendly – world with Vine release

By Kate Knibbs Published January 24, 2013

The wrestling match for mobile app dominance just got a little more interesting. Just as we suspected, Twitter launched video looping service Vine today, giving users a video-meets-GIF creation tool. The results of which are able to be embedded directly into Twitter posts.

David Bowie says HULLO VINE #davidbowie vine.co/v/b5HxmWlj5ph

— KateKnibbs (@KateKnibbs) January 24, 2013

Vine lets you create six-second videos to share. Basically, you can make little movies that look like high-quality GIFs and post them on Twitter, Facebook, or straight to the Vine app. It might take a while for people to get the hang of it, but the possibility for hilarious and interesting videos is enormous.

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Twitter bought Vine back in October, a decision indicating the micro-blogging site wants to bulk up on its media capabilities and get an in-house video service.

Instagram’s expanding popularity threatens Twitter since it gives people an image-focused alternative platform for sharing information – and takes eyeballs away from Twitter. It makes sense Twitter is bent on acquiring services like Vine that provide novel ways to create media.

And Vine is undeniably fun to use. If you’re confused about what to do, there are super-clear step-by-step instructions to help you create your first video: You hold your finger on the screen to record, and lift it off to stop recording. By tapping and removing your finger you can create a funny, short videos, and you can also add sound.

Like Instagram and Twitter itself, you can use hashtags on Vine to hunt down interesting clips.

When you download Vine, you can find friends from Twitter, Facebook, or your address book, which will make it easy to get a good roster of videos. And the commenting and ‘liking’ options are quite similar to Instagram – the only real difference is you hit a smiley face instead of a heart to show your approval.

Right now, Vine is only available as a mobile app for iOS, but we suspect expansion is also imminent. Twitter won’t want to leave Android users hanging.

Vine is surprisingly hard to find in the App Store — it didn’t show up when we searched it — so if you want to download it, you might want to click here.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kate Knibbs is a writer from Chicago. She is very happy that her borderline-unhealthy Internet habits are rewarded with a…

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