Vine: The Instagram for video?

There has been a lot of talk recently about finding the Instagram for video. Tech investors have been scrambling to find the service that can match the simplicity and market penetration of the Facebook-owned $1bn photo-sharing giant, but for consumers surely that’s what YouTube already offers?

Photos are easy to share and take very little effort to create. Open Instagram, take a shot, colourise it then hit “upload”. In 20 seconds you’ve uploaded an interesting shot of your cat.

Making interesting video takes more effort. You’re not just dealing with light and composition but audio, editing and story. It’s probably for these reasons that YouTube is used more as a video repository rather than a quickfire social sharing platform, one where you dip-in to get updates on friends and family. Producing good video takes more time.

All this paves the way for Vine, Twitter’s latest acquisition, allowing you to create short snappy six second videos and embed them directly within tweets. Co-founder Dom Hofmann tweeted the first Vine video yesterday (23rd Jan 2013):

After a week of salad, I’m craving steak tartare at 11 in the morning. vine.co/v/bOIqn6rLeID

— Dom Hofmann (@dhof) January 23, 2013

It’s an exciting move. By limiting videos to six seconds, they don’t have enough time to be boring, and because they loop even the most quickly cut video can be rewatched until it’s understood.

The Vine app (currently available only to Apple devices) gets round the editing problem by making its users hold their finger on the screen to shoot a clip and when six seconds is up a video is made. To shoot multiple clips within the six seconds just take your finger off the screen after your first shot, reposition the camera, and go again. It’s unclear what stories can be told in such a short space of time but users will no doubt start pushing the boundaries.

It’s an exciting time for video. Get stuck in and enjoy the carefree days before inevitable copyright and ownership issues spoil it all!

Watch our first Vine here:

Hi Twitter! Our first Vine vid vine.co/v/b5H1JKij3VU

— Will at Epix Media (@epixvideo) January 24, 2013

(See the Twitter blog post announcing Vine here)

Follow Will @epixvideo