Vine’s 6-Second Video Loops: The New 140-Character Tweet?

Well, it’s been nearly a couple of weeks since Twitter launched Vine, its new microvideo sharing app, and the buzz has finally led me to check it out.

Examples of the buzz…headlines like this:

Why Vine will be as revolutionary as Twitter was

Why Vine’s Going to Grow Into Something Huge

In case you haven’t heard of Vine yet, it’s an app that lets users create 6-second long video clips on infinite loop and then share them on Vine, Twitter, and Facebook.

So, basically, the buzz is all about stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/markhoppus/status/298834778046754818

I know. Thrilling.

But seriously, I had the same reaction to Facebook status updates and Tweets when I first learned about them, so I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss.

And besides, along with the mundane (MY NEW THERMOS!!!), there are cool “vines” to be found, like this one:

(By the way, you can pause a vine by clicking on it.)

One seriously HUGE feature missing from Vine is the ability to share videos posted by others. I can’t fathom why they didn’t roll the app out with functionality that allows you to select someone else’s vine from the app and then reblog it, share it to Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. As of now, the only way I was able to include them here, in this post, was to search for vines in Twitter tweets and the post the tweets. It limits browsing vines in the app to simply viewing them, liking them, and commenting on them.

While some vines have already gone viral, these 6-second clips won’t realize their full viral potential until sharing is enhanced.

In the meantime, consider me intrigued.

I don’t see myself creating vines. Video is not my thing. But browsing and sharing my favorites here already shows signs of being a potentially fun new form of entertainment.