#Trending

One of the largest trending social media software in the last year is the Vine app.  Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupo, and Colin Kroll founded vine in June 2012 (Wikipedia). Twitter acquired Vine in October of 2012. Vine was released on January 24^th, 2013. The Vine app took sometime to get on it’s feet, but in April of 2013 Vine became the number one downloaded app in the IOS App Store (Wikipedia).

The Vine app functions as an outpost to post short videos. The videos only last 6 seconds long but can be as many short clips as possible for the user to create within those 6 seconds. Vine uses the pull method for information, meaning users have the ability to follow other users, just like Twitter. I believe the popularity of Vine is in part due to the popularity of YouTube videos and comedians. The format of a short entertaining video is popular to viewers because of its simplicity. These videos are not overly involved and you do not need to have a high attention span. The quickness of the videos and the constant changing to new videos works well to entertain users.

Another aspect of Vine just like YouTube is the ability for people to become famous. People like Jerome Jarre, or Nicholas Megalis have become “Vine Famous” but may not have ever been heard of if not for the app.  These creators become famous by having unique/entertaining videos. If their videos become popular enough they will land on the “Popular Page” which is full of vines with thousands of “like.” Nicholas Megalis actually was invited to the MTV Music Awards Red Carpet show because of his Vine fame. Jerome Jarre was recently interviewed on the Ellen DeGeneres Show about his style of Vines.

For businesses, Vine has become a useful marketing tool for their products. Socialmediatoday.com posted an article on ways to promote your brand through Vine.  One of the most productive ways to promote your brand on Vine is to “Let the Influencers Talk.” Virgin mobile is very active in this type of promotion. The idea is to use somebody who is “Vine Famous” to create a vine for your company’s Vine account. Then the user will most likely “re-vine” the vine (like a re-tweet) and then it will receive a large amount of “likes” and “re-vines” which will land it on the popular page which will make the vine spread even wider. Another way to strengthen your brand is to provide sneak peaks. Disney has done this with their theme parks to create Otaku amongst their fans. Other ways to strengthen your brand would be to create art-style vines or vines that make your company seem more human.

Overall I think the popularity of Vine people wanting to become video creators like Hollywood. YouTube users originally had this idea/philosophy. Vine is an extension of the YouTube philosophy that anybody can be a video creator. People want to show that they are creative or funny/talented. Vine gives them an outpost when they can showcase their talents.