The microblogging company Twitter, in January 24, 2013, unveiled Vine, an app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Vine, acquired by Twitter last fall, is its latest mobile app that hosts short video clips for sharing through the user's Twitter feed.
The service is being referred to by many as Twitter's "Instagram for video" that lets anyone create and share short looping videos. The videos shot by the Vine app are limited to a maximum of 6 seconds, and play in a continuous loop. Users can choose to have sound on or off, as can anyone who encounters a Vine video in a tweet or blog post. The first Twitter's own video service was used for the first time a day before its launch by Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo, as a standalone service that works in conjunction with Twitter, but doesn't depend on it.
In a blog post, Vine co-founder and general manager Dom Hofmann wrote that, "Posts on Vine are about abbreviation - the shortened form of something larger. They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They're quirky, and we think that's part of what makes them so special."
The service was first launched as a free iOS app on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Currently, Twitter is working on bringing the app to other platforms.
Introduced as "a new way to share video", Vine, as a completely public and compelling medium that give users a brief "window" into what people all over the world are seeing, or the kinds of things they’re thinking about, is becoming a hits among users. And the proof of the popularity is in the numbers of download achieved in just a few hours after it was released.
Just like Facebook’s Instagram turns regular people into creative photographers, Vine encourages anyone with an Apple device to make video montages. And unlike other platforms where it might take minutes or more to get a video fix, Vine makes it simple and fast to create and share it.
As popularity and number of users increases, in less than a week after its debut, adult related video clips started to appear on the service. To anticipate the controversy, the social-networking company made searches for adult content more difficult. This is done by blocking several hashtags related to adult contents and making the videos to require tapping on the screen to get past a warning. "We're in the process of changing how users find and view sensitive content. We're experimenting with a number of approaches and will continue to iterate," said a Twitter spokesperson.
The Vine app briefly named as Editor's Choice in Apple App Store before Apple removed it from the list. While not forbidden by Twitter's guidelines, Apple took a strict policy over adult content.
Vine, Blocked from Facebook
Beside the large download numbers, Vine, just like any popular services, also received many praise and criticisms. These has turned the eyes of many observers, as well as competitors. A day after its launch, Vine users are suddenly blocked from using the app's friend-finding feature to search for Facebook friends. Instead of letting its users search for their Facebook friends, the app responds with the message saying that the app "is not authorized to make this Facebook request."
Facebook has blocked Vine from accessing its API (application programming interface), which would let Vine extract that data.
It's a fact that Facebook and Twitter are competitive social networks, and it both sides are protective of their user base and, in Facebook's case, advertising revenues. Facebook is cautious about who gets access to its information and would take a hard line against properties it considers competitive, although It does not want to empower competitive efforts.
Facebook's reason to block Vine, and other apps for friend-finding data is said to be its decision to protect its assets. The social network giant published a blog entry on January 25, explaining that it has changed its policies to clarify this stance. Facebook is saying that if the app doesn't contribute to Facebook's platform - like letting users share content created on the apps to Facebook - the app can't use the social network's data.
Vine is the just the latest in a string of cases of apps that have been blocked due to competitive interests. Facebook saw enormous appeal in Instagram's user base when it made its $1 billion offer to buy the photo-sharing app last year. It was not long, however, before Instagram disabled its integration within Twitter after Twitter blocked access to its social graph to Instagram users. Beside Instagram, the stance Twitter took last year, also closed its API access to apps that included LinkedIn and Tumblr, shortly after announcing that it was cracking down on developers who didn't help its bottom line. This was Twitter's move to increasingly limiting users' choice in tools because it wants more control over advertising revenue that they generate.
Twitter that has bought Crashlytics, a startup whose crash reporting tool has been incorporated into a wide variety of iOS apps including Yelp, Kayak, TaskRabbit, and Waze, is going deeper into mobile. With Crashlytics, Twitter attempts to deliver a powerful and lightweight crash reporting solution to address a huge hole in mobile app development in its Vine app.