Twitter is continuing to pursue its rich-media ambitions and has released Vine, a social video app that offers deep integration with the micro-blogging platform.
Vine allows users to share six-second looping videos (with optional sound) both on the service and within embedded tweets. The videos play directly inside tweets and in expanded tweets within the tweet stream.
Co-founder and GM of Vine, Dom Hofmann, confirmed in a post on the Vine blog that the service has, in fact, been acquired by Twitter: "Our companies share similar values and goals; like Twitter, we want to make it easier for people to come together to share and discover what's happening in the world. We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it's through a 140-character Tweet or a six-second video."
Hofmann adds: "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."
Vine is available globally as a free app for the iPhone and iPod touch, and users can create a separate account or sign in using Twitter.
Within a matter of hours of the app becoming available, Facebook cut off Vine's "find people" feature. The feature initially allowed Vine users to find their Facebook friends on the service, but the Facebook button now only leads to an error message that states: "Vine is not authorised to make this Facebook request."
Social media wars
Facebook has not officially commented on the matter, although the move is not all that surprising within the increasingly competitive social landscape.
At the end of last year, Twitter disabled Instagram's "find friends" features after the service was acquired by Facebook. Instagram then announced it would no longer support Twitter Cards, and all images shared to Twitter from Instagram can now only be viewed on the Instagram Web site. Twitter then hit back by launching an update to its Android and iOS apps which add its own (albeit basic) built-in photo filters to its image hosting service.
Vine marks an interesting step for Twitter and is the micro-blogging platform's first standalone app for non-text-based media creation. Twitter will no doubt be hoping the new type of content within the tweet stream will keep users engaged with the site for longer.
Over the last year, Twitter has been pushing to become a rich-media social network and to keep users within its ecosystem. The Twitter Cards feature was developed in order to allow users to view rich content such as videos, photos and summaries of shared articles within the tweet stream.
As it continues to bolster its own services, Twitter has been burning bridges by cutting off third-party clients and placing new restrictions on its API.
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