Despite its shortcomings, Vine is a hit. In case you're not familiar with it, this free social video app from Twitter curtails your iPhone videos to a mere 6 seconds—a sort of video-only Instagram. Though still in its infancy, the video-sharing app has undergone a fairly substantial, feature-adding update in the new Vine 1.3 version. While the update brings real improvements, the app is still lacking compared with Viddy and Instagram, which recently added video shooting and sharing with more editing capabilities than Vine.
First off, here's a list of the major new attractions that have made their way in the app:
• Channels—Browse or submit your posts to 15 new channels—from Comedy, Art & Experimental, to Cats, and more.
• On The Rise—Discover new and interesting Viners right from your Explore screen.
• Revining—Share your favorite posts with all your followers on Vine in one tap.
• New Capture Tools—Shoot with style using the new focus, grid, and ghost tools.
• Protected Accounts—Allow only people you approve to follow you and view your posts.
I'll discuss these new features in the relevant review sections below. But first off, let's be clear: Vine isn't a case of "video finally comes to Twitter." You've long been able to embed a DailyMotion, YouTube or Vimeo video into a Twitter post, so this isn't the first time anyone's been able to add video to tweets. Vine is more of an attempt to co-opt the craze for animated GIFs, most prominently evidenced on image-heavy mini-blogging site Tumblr, as well as to become the Instagram of video.
Vine movies, which play to today's short attention spans, may be limited in length, but like animated GIFs, they loop infinitely, which actually does the opposite of increasing their impact. Let's see how it stacks up against other social video apps, such as Lightt, Yahoo's new Qwiki, Socialcam, Viddy, and Instagram itself.
Signup and Setup
The app store entry for Vine says you must be over 17 to install it, and that it contains "Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity." That actually was a problem at its original launch, when a porn Vine made it to the app's Editor's Picks section (which no longer exists). The app requires an iPhone 3GS or later running iOS 5.0 or later. It's optimized for iPhone 5, but not for iPad, where you'll either have to view it in a small window or zoomed to 2x. Like a good many of the latest crop of iPhone apps, Vine asks whether it can interrupt you with notifications and wants access to your location.
As you'd expect with an app just acquired by Twitter, you can sign in with your Twitter account, or create a new Vine account using an email address. The typical social app would also let you sign up via Facebook, but that's not an option for obvious reasons. Conveniently, you don't need to actually provide your Twitter credentials, the app can take them from your iPhone's Settings. But even though Vine is owned by Twitter, you'll still have to create a new Vine account even if you sign up via Twitter.
The new private option is similar to Twitter's—it's all or nothing. You can't designate some videos as private and others as public, as you can in Viddy. To go private, on your Settings page, scroll down to "Your content" and you'll see to slider options: Posts are protected and Sensitive posts (for aspiring pornographers). Both choices apply to all your posts.
Interface
After setup, my view was of an Instagram-like newsfeed of GIF-like videos from contacts I didn't know I had. Apparently, these were preselected Vine/Twitter employees' accounts. The well-designed and simple interface has but two buttons in the top corners above the feed—on the left Home, and on the right a movie camera. Pressing the home button offered three more options in addition to the home view I was already viewing: Explore, Activity, and Profile. These first two were encouraging, reminding me of the addictive similar pages of Flickr.
A banner across the top of the home screen encouraged me to get my own new Vine follows. I could find these by scanning my phone's local address book, Twitter (of course). Facebook has been removed as a source of new contacts. Tit-for-tat for when Twitter blocked the Facebook-owned Instagram. This means war! I could also simply search for Vine user names, or invite friends to the service using email or SMS.
As in every self-respecting social network, each user gets a profile page, and Vine's resembles Twitter's, except it offers separate tabs for Posts and Likes. On top is the user's photo, a text area for inspirational self-description and a big Follow button. If something or someone offends you, you can report or block a profile for inappropriate posting.
The redesigned Explore page is an even bigger treat than it was originally. You still get Popular Now, but this is joined by On the Rise, which makes discovering amusing Vines even easier. Colorful Windows 8-like tiles now offer YouTube-like sections, rather than hashtags; the latter now appear below the colorful tiles, and are now trending hastags, rather than just the preset ones like #sports, #travel, and so on.
Once you do discover a video you love, you can Like (thanks to a smiley face button), comment, and now "Revine" it. The last is just like retweeting in Twitter; it even uses the same button icon. It really is instantaneous, with no options required before taking hold. As with the Like button, the Revine button turns dark green, and you can tap it again to un-favorite it.
If someone shares a Vine link, you can watch it on a bare-bones Vine-hosted Web page, but there's no website where you can view all your own and contacts' Vines or do any of the social connecting and browsing. You can watch the videos inside Twitter apps or in your Twitter feed. Vine videos also can play on Facebook.
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