Twitter on Thursday released a new, video-focused iPhone app--replete with a social network of its own. If a tweet is 140 characters and a picture's worth 1000 words, a six-second video of the sort you can create with Vine must be worth 144,000 words or so, by today's exchange rates.
Vine, available free in the App Store, lets you share and view short, looping videos. In Twitter's blog post announcing the app, the company says support for platforms beyond iOS is coming soon.
You can log into Vine with your Twitter account, or create an entirely new profile. To make a video, you tap and hold on the screen; when you release, you make a new cut. You can include as many cuts in your video as you can fit in the six second window.
Once you're finished, you can share your looping creation with Vine, Twitter, and Facebook--if you so choose. You can also, unsurprisingly enough, find other Vine-using friends from your contacts list or your Facebook and Twitter friends.
As you scroll through your Vine timeline, videos simply start playing as they come into view, and then stop automatically as you scroll past.
Vine is free and requires iOS 5 or later. My own feelings on the app can be described best, of course, in Vine's own format (click the button to unmute):
Thoughts on Vine. vine.co/v/b5HAgIZFjh7
