Playing Around with Vine: Documenting Your Life, Six Seconds at a Time

Last week, I heard some rumblings about a new service called Vine and mostly ignored it. On Friday, I decided to take a peek into what it was… and ended up downloading the app an creating an account.

Recently acquired by Twitter, Vine lets you use your phone to record up to 6 seconds of video. But the interesting thing is that it doesn’t need to be a continuous six seconds. In fact, a great deal of the enjoyment comes from stitching together numerous shorter moments to tell a larger story. Think of Vine as the animated GIF’s older brother.

The interface for Vine is very bare bones: press down on the screen to begin recording, and lift your finger up to pause recording. Fill your six seconds however you like.

Here’s the first thing I posted up to Vine. I don’t think there’s any good way to automatically embed a Vine (yet), but the workaround seems to be embedding a Twitter post about the Vine:

Bunny Dinner Time vine.co/v/b52LJljXOZe

— avoision (@avoision) January 26, 2013

It seems pretty neat so far, and I can only imagine that more and more folks will start to use it. Like Twitter, having a constraint will likely bring about some very interesting uses.

If you’re curious to see an assortment of random Vines, but can’t be bothered to download the app… check out vinepeek. The site pulls Vines posted up in real-time (with no moderation), and with the audio turned on. It’s one after another, sometimes unrelated, oftentimes random, and more than a little mesmerizing. Most likely, you’ll be hanging around for more than just six seconds.

Related:
Cinemagraphs, Animated GIFs, and the Rise of the Moving Still Image
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