Vine

About

Vine is a mobile video-recording application developed by Twitter that allows its users to create, upload and share short video clips spanning up to six seconds in length.

History

Acquisition

Originally developed by Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov in June 2012, the New York City-based company was acquired by Twitter in October 2012 and introduced to the public in January 2013.

Release

Within the first week of its launch, pornographic video clips reportedly began appearing on the service, prompting Gawker to label the app “America’s Hottest New Porn Search Engine” in an article published on January 27th. On the following day, a sexually explicit video clip titled “DildoPlay” was accidentally featured as an “Editor’s Pick” on every Vine user’s newsfeed page, further drawing criticisms and mockeries from the tech news blogosphere. Later that same day, a Twitter spokesperson issued an apology, explaining that:

“a human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately.”

While uploading pornography is not prohibited by Twitter’s guidelines, several tags containing sexually explicit terms were blocked as a result and the minimum age limit for the iPhone app was raised from 12 to 17 to comply with Apple’s iTunes terms of service.

Features

Users can create short video clips with audio that are up to six seconds long. The camera only records while the screen is being tapped by the photographer, thus allowing users to easily jump cut from one scene to another or to create a stop motion animation in similar vein of GIF moving images. The finished image can then be shared on Vine or Twitter. As of March 2013, the app is only available on Apple iOS.

Highlights

#EverybodySpurts

In February 2013, artist Marlo Meekins shared a vine clip of herself turning her head towards the camera and drooling liquid from the mouth, while listening to “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. In the following days, numerous other viners shared their own versions with the hashtag #everybodyspurts.

Search Interest

External References