By Manabu Kobayashi, Diana Lagrosa, Marvin Madayag, Rachelle Tung
The name Vine is Vignette meaning “a short impressionistic scene." The Vine logo connects letters “V” and “I” just like how a vine wraps and loops itself around a tree. When the Vine logo is also turned upside down, number “6” which is the number of seconds a Vine mini-video clip, is also displayed (Langer, 2013).
The application is now available on iOS and Android devices and is used even by comedians, news reporters and Twitter users who want to share more than just a picture. Vine, which is Twitter’s video sharing application can be searched online at Vine.co where all clips posted to Vine live or shared in tweet will be present. Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann purchased Vince.co domain for $500,000, prior to Twitter’s acquirement of Vine app. Currently, Vine has more than 13 million users worldwide who share their 6-seconds video clips (Langer, 2013).
History
In June 2012, Vine was founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. Last year in October, Twitter acquired the smartphone application Vine where users can create videos and edit them to become a six second animated gif that loops and can be embedded in a tweet, with limitation of 140 characters of Twitter. Vine app is the first standalone product of Twitter, just like Facebook having Facebook Messenger and Facebook Poke. It is also a hybrid of video sharing and photo sharing, but with an edge of having sound, over animated gifs. This cool advantage may be what social media and bloggers are rooting for. It can also be auto-played and be muted automatically muted or turned on (Rosales, 2013; Vine, n.d.).
Just months ago, Vine has been regarded as a trend and has continued to win the hearts of users worldwide. It features 6-second video clips which are being shared throughout the world in just a flash. Not only that, but in recent history it has become one of the largest application to have experienced market growth stories. Based on the new Mary Meeker internet study, the active user base of Vine soared from 2% to approximately 8% of iPhone owners in the U.S. between January and April. Based on Onavo, the development of Vine among users is greater than WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Chrome, Snapchat or other competitors. In fact, the growth of Vine among users is seven times more rapid than Spanchat’s. Additionally, an interesting aspect would be its resemblance to Instragram’s Video feature where users can share and record 15 second video clips. Regardless of Vine’s rival Instragram, in seven countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, Vine has known to be one of the top 10 phone applications featured in iphone. It is also fascinating that Norway is where Vine is the second most popular free Iphone download. Truly, it has garnered huge mainstream success in America as well as other countries. Another development of Vine is the quality of the most popular Vine clips to have skyrocketed. The breakout of these videos are attributed to the scrupulous stop-motion animation work, hot models, synchronized groups of extras, exotic locations or some combination of those mentioned. Although Vine seemed to attract a narrow niche than Instragram, Vine has outpaced all messaging apps in engagement growth of users (Kuittinen, 2013; Woolaston & Prigg, 2013).
Description/Features
On the company’s blog, Don Hofmann, co-founder and general manager of Vine announced, “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. We’re also happy to share the news that Vine has 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” (Rosales, 2013).
“We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it’s through a 140-character Tweet or a six-second video,” Hoffman added. “Although we’ve joined Twitter, you don’t need a Twitter account to use Vine (but signing up is a little quicker if you do!). We are thrilled to be part of Twitter, and look forward to the opportunities we can pursue together in the future” (Rosales, 2013).
How it is used in Business
Many businesses today have been coming up with creative and interesting ways of engaging their customers in different ways. And with the continued boom in the application age, more and more companies use such apps in engaging their customers; Vine is one of those applications.
The uses of VIne in business can be summarized into the following:
1. Marketing Function
Internet has become the avenue for entrepreneurs to advertise themselves. It has become the most common and accessible way to market to a lot of people in the world. And as small and even large businesses embrace this medium of marketing, it creates more value to them. Vine can be used as a marketing tool. Brands like Gap, Samsung, Puma and Volkswagen are some examples of these brands that uses Vine to introduce their products, create a marketing trend and influence their target market using short a simple videos.
2. Product Instructional/Manual Function
Vine can also be used as an instructional tool or manual tool. Basically this function talks about how businesses can use Vine to teach people how to do stuff with their products. This function is very useful for products that requires assembly and maintenance as short and snappy videos can be used for such functions.
3. Customer Interaction Function
With the Vine, businesses can use this a platform to interact with their customers. Also in a vice-versa effect, customers can also communicate with businesses when they post their own videos about a company’s brands, products, service or application. Businesses can also do videos that would bring the viewers inside the operations of the company, this would open the confidence of consumers towards the company and would bring positive effects.
4. Informative Purpose Function
Businesses can also take the opportunity to get some engagement to your audience of the video to spread informative information about the brand. Also educating customers and consumers about the company can give a huge boost to the company which would then will make them confident that your customers your products and services inside and out.