Hands On With Twitter's Social Video App, Vine

By Emily Price  on 
Hands On With Twitter's Social Video App, Vine

Twitter launched Vine on Thursday -- an app that lets you share 6-second video clips.

Currently iOS-only, the stop-motion videos can include as many scenes as you can fit in. Video stops and starts when you press on your device’s screen. Your finished product can then be shared just on Vine, or with friends on Twitter or -- in theory -- Facebook.

Still in its infancy, the service isn’t without drawbacks. Sharing for instance can only be done when the video is initially uploaded. So if you forget to select that Twitter button when you upload your followers will be out of luck forever.

Thursday at least, uploading those videos to social networks also takes a bit of time. Some of our videos went up immediately, while others took close to an hour.

Sound is also recorded along with each video clip. While that’s not a huge deal if you’re recording in a quiet location, video recorded where there’s a lot of noise can sound choppy and be jarring for viewers. (Videos play automatically in Twitter, but the default setting appears to be on mute.)

And then there’s Twitter's relationship with Facebook. A few hours after the app’s launch Thursday Facebook blocked the service from being able to access your friends lists.

Knowing which of your Facebook friends are using Vine isn’t essential to the service, but it does tend to make finding those friends –- who you might not be connected to on Twitter –- that much harder.

Have you tried Vine out yet? Let us know what you think about the app in the comments.

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