* This is a guest blog from Oliver West, Digital Director of design agency Arkitex
If we compiled a list of all the available social networks it would stretch from our desk to the moon, OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but there are lots of them on the web, 99% of which you will never have heard of before.
There are obviously a collection of the more popular ones that you will be familiar with, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram. New networks are popping up all the time trying to compete with the big players and ultimately most of them fail to gain the necessary traction to enter the game for one reason or another.
There is now a new kid on the block kicking up some dirt in the social media arena – Vine. Created by the folks behind Twitter, Vine is clearly going to have plenty of media coverage, that in itself is no guarantee of success – but it will certainly help spread the word.
The easiest way to describe Vine is a cross between Instagram and Twitter, in Vine’s own words ‘Vine is a mobile service that lets you create and share short looping videos’. In a nutshell, you can share your videos in the same way you would share photos on Instagram or Flickr, BUT, the videos can only be a maximum of six seconds. In the same way Twitter wants your ‘quick’ updates, they are trying to keep your videos short but sweet.
The idea and technology is nothing new but it is presented very well and its clean and easy to use, which i think would have been the biggest hurdle, I have plenty of clients that are less than technically minded (to put it politely), but they managed to get to grips with Twitter after a few minutes.
Vine has taken the same approach to their goal of making it ‘easy’. It goes without saying that the app and service is free but unlike most other social media networks, it can’t be viewed on a desktop computer or laptop – its a mobile service so can only be viewed on a mobile device. Will Vine catch on? That’s anyone’s guess, but if I was a betting man I would say yes.
If you market a business or brand, whether you intend to use it immediately or not, I would register your username straight away before someone else gets it. If you are viewing this page on a mobile device you can go to their homepage and will see a link to download the app on to your phone. If you already have a Twitter account then you can use that to login so the signup process is very easy.
