Vine, a new Twitter enabled app, was released today for iPhones and other iOS devices through Apple's App Store. The new application allows users to make videos and then tweet them out, but much like Twitter's 140 character limit, brevity is the thing. Vine videos are only 6 seconds long.
What use is a 6 second long video? We've already figured it out: Vine is for cat videos. While many people have been testing Vine out at their offices, resulting in some pretty boring tours of peoples' desks, another popular subject for filming this first day has been cats.
It makes sense, Vine's 6 second long videos look a lot like the picture file-type known as "GIFs." If you're not aware of what GIFs are, they're the photos that animate comprised of a few frames of animation. GIFs are already a popular file type for those funny time-waster websites, and what's one of the most popular subjects of those websites? Cats. Cats falling off of things, cats being confused, cats being cute, and cats so full of the hubris of curiosity they embarrass themselves.
Here are five of the trial runs for CatVine (that's what they should call it). We have:
1) Cat Meowing Unhappily About Being Filmed
3) The "Why are you standing on the bed behind me?" Cat
4) Lounge-Cat
So far the cat vine videos aren't much more interesting than the desk-tour variety, but that will change. Given the ubiquity of smartphones and people likely constantly fiddling with their new Vine app, short videos of cats being awesome, or caught in compromising situations, are bound to pop spread like wildfire across the net.
Right now only cats with iPhone-toting owners are on the cusp of internet fame, but soon that will change. According to Twitter's blog, Vine will be coming to other platforms, like Android, soon
Thanks to: AllThingsD via NPR