Vine Has New Features and They Rock

Vine is a crazy concept.  Make a video that is under 6 seconds but has the content and reach of a video that’s 6 minutes.  How is that even possible?  How can we even do that?

Well, there are a lot of people and a lot of brands that have mastered Vine.  During Halloween this year multiple big name brands, particularly Oreo and Tide, rolled out Vine campaigns that were outstanding.  They captured the essence of the brand while be incredibly entertaining in only 6 seconds.  Brands aren’t even just using Vine on Halloween, they use the platform constantly to show off their products in short, visual ways.

The Tide Vines were awesome.

In essence, Vine is the perfect video platform.  The attention span of the average Internet and social media user is going down.  YouTube videos over the 2 minute mark are being considered too long, even ads longer than 30 seconds are pushing it.  Audiences today want to be engaged immediately and then move on just as quickly.  Vine is perfect for this.  It’s 6 seconds of fast paced video that’s so short it has to be engaging because it’s over before you know it.

The trouble with Vine is that the average social media user is probably confused by it.  Yes, Vine has taken off as a social media platform, but the people making crazy cool videos are artists and creatives who have an exceptional handle on video platforms.  What about the average user? 

In October, Vine included new features to make it more user friendly.  Two new tools were introduced: Sessions, which allows users to save drafts of videos and come back to finish them, and Time Travel, a tool that allows users to remove, reorganize and replace parts of the video within the post before it gets published.

Thanks to Mashable for taking screenshots of the new features, the top picture is Time Travel and the bottom picture is Sessions.

I tried out these new features, because I am someone who finds it difficult to make cool and engaging Vine videos.  First off, the Sessions tool is a godsend.  Having the ability to make drafts of videos and save them after exiting the app is great, because one of the biggest flaws of Vine I had seen before was that videos had to be taken in the moment and posted right away.  Time Travel is interesting because it allows you to easily move the different shots around within the overall Vine.

I personally believe that Vine is a platform that isn’t going away anytime soon.  Yes, Instagram video is longer and has filters, but Vine is a pure video platform along the lines of YouTube.  I think that if brands continue to use Vine in the ways they did during Halloween and presumably will use it during Christmas, then the platform will only expand.  Including user friendly tools such as Session and Time Travel only up it’s appeal to the general public and as our attention spans continue to decrease, Vine will stick around to entertain us in 6 seconds or less.

Check out my time traveling Vine: https://vine.co/v/hUnxetbDbEm