Twitter announced its integration of Vine today, and to put not too fine a point on it, the service is, in essence, a way to create a video tweet. If a text tweet = 140 characters, then a video tweet = 6 seconds. More details over at TNW, but this announcement is quite consistent with my post earlier this week: Portrait of Twitter As A Young Media Company.
Holding hands at Tilden park http://t.co/MtfO79aJ
— James Buckhouse (@buckhouse) January 24, 2013
I’ve long pined for the time when video enters the grammar of our ongoing communication on the web. This is Twitter’s bid to frame how the medium might join the conversation. It’s not a new idea – I guess 12 Seconds was three years early and six seconds too long – but it’s an idea whose time may have come. I’ve seen the iOS app, and it’s very slick, allowing for seamless pauses and cuts. And man, is the example on Twitter’s blog (embedded here) cute. I could stare at it for a long time…well, no, wait, I did stare at it for a long time. I bet you are too. Video is very … engaging when done well.
Advertisers, sharpen your six second pencils. Here’s another native format for you to consider….
This is a great way of bringing video content to Twitter. The site’s reliance on text content, in the form of tweets, can make it look static at certain times.
Pretty cool new feature! I’m sure people can get creative in six seconds.