Storytelling changed in 2006 with the founding of Twitter. Now with video sharing, Twitter hopes to change it again.

On Jan. 24, Twitter announced a new social network, Vine, which allows users to creatively share short videos with their friends. Vine, a smartphone application for iPhone and Android, revolves around a creative video generation.

Just holding down a finger is all it takes to make a quick video. These six-second videos can be easily shared on Twitter and Facebook, as well as the internal Vine community.

There are hundreds of video-sharing smartphone applications, but Vine is the first that allows the user to splice together several different shots. As a result of the ease of use, Vine videos comprise almost half of all uploaded videos on Twitter, according to a Jan. 31 article on TechCrunch.com.

The popularity of Vine is already taking off on campus. Syracuse University student-athletes are sharing their exercising regimens and a College of Visual and Performing Arts account started uploading Vine videos of campus buildings.

“Even though I love Instagram, I sometimes want to share something active. This fills a void,” said Bryan Chou, a junior advertising major. “Because it allows me control to take start-and-stop filming, it has a lot more creative potential.”

Christina Fieni, a junior advertising major, said she has been experimenting with different ways to use Vine.

“I took a road trip and was using Vine to catalogue my trip. I think it’s fun but needs some work,” she said. “I think Instagram is a lot easier to use but hopefully there will be some changes made.”

Twitter officials have high hopes for Vine because it has been established as a separate entity from the Twitter mainframe. Previous features Twitter has integrated have been imbedded seamlessly into the ecosystem, according to a Feb. 4 article in Wired magazine.

Publications like The Guardian, The Week and Mashable are comparing the meteoric rise of Vine to the incredibly popular smartphone app, Instagram. Instagram currently boasts 90 million monthly active users generating 8,500 likes per second, according to a January 21 article in Forbes magazine.

In the two weeks since its launch, the rapid growth of Vine has spurred a pornographic phase. Vine is quickly becoming a magnet for explicit public sharing. Blogs across the web are becoming havens for storing these revealing video snapshots, according to a Jan. 27 article by The Atlantic magazine.

Vine is one of several video apps that has been touted as the next Instagram, in part thanks to its backing from Twitter.

Published on February 5, 2013 at 1:00 am

Contact Jared: jmrose03@syr.edu