The internet communities went completely berzerk when Twitter announced the unruly demise of their short-form video app called Vine in October earlier this year. It is one of the prominent sources of content consumption and the micro-blogging platform is taking it away from users. But the company had today published an update putting speculations about the future of the platform to rest.
To everyone’s surprise, Twitter has decided not to completely obliterate the Vine branding. Instead, it mentions that only the platform and the content will be going away. Post the closure of the service, the Vine app won’t be pulled down from the app stores but will be rebranded to a bare bones camera application that’ll continue to record 6-second videos — the platform’s trademark. This means you’ll now part ways with the community but the memories of the same will remain.
The users who download (or replace) the Vine camera will be greeted to a camera experience somewhat similar to other looping video apps like Instagram’s Boomerang. But will users also be able to capture photos using this app? There is currently no info regarding the same. The looping videos recorded using this app can either be posted directly to Twitter or be saved to the camera roll.
This application will most likely act like an extension to Twitter’s current social ecosystem which is in dire need of recurring users to help it pull ahead of the user base stagnation. Thus, the micro-blogging platform is currently working on such feature additions that’ll enable you to easily follow you favorite Vine star on Twitter with just a click. In the official update, it states,
In the coming days we’re also rolling out a way to make it easy for your Vine followers to follow you on Twitter — stay tuned for a “Follow on Twitter” notification soon.
The new camera application will replace the current Vine app available in the app stores across all platform, starting January. Till then, you have been provided with the option to download your Vines through the app or the website but you’ll get different results for each of these. The FAQ’s on the company’s website states:
The file of Vines that you download from vine.co will include an index.html file that contains your Vine captions, along with the number of likes, comments and revines. If you download your Vines from the app, you will receive only your video files saved to your camera roll with no captions or additional information.
So, does this mean that we’ll continue to experience six-second looping videos on Twitter? Are you comfortable with this alternative? Comment your thoughts down below.
