Tech

It only makes sense that the next evolution of short message sharing should go from text (Twitter) to photo (Instagram) to video (Vine). For some reason though, short video sharing phase seems to have trouble getting any traction. While apps like Cinemagr.Am and Flixel aren’t technically video, they’re animated so I consider them “video with training wheels.” Those apps are fun, but I don’t see many of my friends using them. The classic Google+ problem.

When I fired up the Vine app, I noticed the same thing. Only a couple of my early adopter buddies were on there and no one seemed to be sharing anything. I do struggle with the idea of short video sharing in a Twitter/Instagram-like feed as I tend to fly through streams, looking at each Tweet or photo for maybe 3 seconds. With video, I’d need to stop, watch, maybe listen? I dunno. I have things to do.

Well, the Vine app makes this a little more interesting. It actually feels very similar to Snapchat, in that you hold your finger to the screen to shoot video, and release your finger when you want to stop. However, in Vine, you can press your finger again and record more video of something else, and you can do this until you’ve filled up 6 seconds of video. I tried it out by grabbing some video of a few coworkers. Coworkers love being filmed.

A couple issues have popped up that has Vine in the headlines, for better or worse. There’s the Facebook problem and the porn problem. Where should we start? Porn.

A couple days ago, if you were to say, search for the #porn tag on Vine you would get an eye full, or maybe less than an eye-full depending on which jerk had posted his junk that day. I did another search this morning, in the name of research, and while there are still Johnsons to be found, there seems to be fewer dongs and more people just remixing porn clips from the web.

The Facebook problem seems boring in comparison, but let’s cover it quick. Twitter and Facebook, being the heavyweights of the Social Media world, tend not to get along. One of the handiest parts of downloading new social apps nowadays is that you can connect with your Facebook account and immediately start looking at your friends’ shares. Well Facebook has blocked that functionality so that you cannot see which of your Facebook friends are using Vine. That leaves you with your Twitter friends. So now you’re stuck with following those people.

Whatever, Facebook. Vine is a fun app, AND it has porn. Win-Win. Vine enables our short attention span generations to create a little cinematic piece and share it with the world. Within one Vine post you can:

• Open on your face
• Cut to a sandwich
• Cut to a closeup of your eyes getting wider
• Cut to the sandwich shivering in fear
• Cut to a shot of you licking your lips
• Cut to a crumb-filled plate

Oh man I would watch that over and over. 5 stars.

See you on the Vine (uh, iPhone users.)

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