Is Vine the Next "Cool" App?

In This Week in Google, the group started their podcast by talking about different social media updates and news. At one point, Leo Laporte briefly mentioned that Twitter put out a new app called Vine. However, he did not further discuss it and the group went back to discussing Google Plus. And even though I am not the biggest Twitter fan I decided to look into this new “upcoming” app to see what it was all about.

The description on the iTunes app store describes the app… “Vine is the best way to see and share life in motion. Create short, beautiful, looping videos in a simple and fun way for your friends and family to see.” With this free app, Vine users can upload unlimited videos, instantly share them on Twitter OR Facebook, use hashtags just like Twitter and even find and follow other users.

(View an example of Vine being used here: http://vine.co/v/bOIqn6rLeID)

Vine is becoming so popular because it allows users to easily share more parts of their lives with their friends and family over Twitter. People who love using Twitter are all about sharing personal stories or photographs with their followers so adding Vine to their phones would be an added bonus. Vine also makes watching other people (including celebrities who use Vine) a lot more interesting because you can see six second snapshots of their lives.

According to an article on Tech Crunch, in it's first week, Vine was able to swing onto the top 10 free apps in the Apple app store. Vine has already beat out the other Twitter video uploading app competitors (http://keyhole.co/realtime/lg5sbR/TwitterVideo). However, many worry that many people will use Vine to upload porn. In it's short existence, Twitter has already had to deal with and respond to multiple NSFW tags and problems on Vine. 

Will Vine become the Instagram of videos? Or will it become another Chatroulette? Only time will tell at this point. 

If you are interested in Vine, check out this "CNET How to: Get Started with Vine" video...