Vine is a new social networking app from Twitter which allows users to share short video clips that they make. If you check out the app, it allows you to upload video that you make to their servers which also include sound. You can follow other users as well as be followed, and everyone on the service can like and comment on your videos. If you are a long time Instagram user, Vine will actually feel very familiar to you. I would say this is Twitter’s answer to Instagram but instead of posting up photos, they are short video clips. Not a bad idea as this differentiates the service from others.

Creating a Vine is simple enough. Just click on the little video camera icon the top right of the app and it will take you to the video capture screen. From there, just tap and hold on the screen to start recording. Release to pause recording, and tap and hold again to resume. You can do this any number of times as long as it fits into the 6-second window. This is cool because it means you do not need to make 1 continuous video. You can actually make a video of different cuts and scenes just by recording a different scene each time you resume recording. That means if you wanted to, you can even make short, stop motion animation clips as well.

Now what I don’t like about Vine however, and this is a problem with all social networks really is that even though the app is from Twitter and creates an account based on your Twitter, you still have to find people to follow all over again. That means if you’re new to Vine, you have exactly zero followers and zero people following you back. This is really one of the main reasons in my opinion why it’s so hard to give up a social network you are already invested in just to start a new one where you have to start all over again. You can have it search for people you may know that might be on the service by having it look through your address book or twitter account. You have to add them all manually however. I would still suggest maybe checking it out though since it is free and if you already have a Twitter account, it makes sign up fairly simple.

In response to Vine however, it’s not a bad app and social network, although it feels a bit too much like Instagram in my opinion and the only real unique thing about it is that you can post video instead of photos. It also feels like some of these users on here are just trying too hard to make their short clips entertaining for the sake of trying to get as many “likes” as they can which I guess is the new norm now as everyone everyone tries to become a social media celebrity.

Vine is available now in the App Store for free. It is Ccompatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.