Philly.com: For short-attention fans
Got a minute? I've got 10 people you should meet.
Exactly a minute. Six seconds for each.
You can do it on Vine, Twitter's mobile app that lets people make and share six-second video loops known as "vines."
You could get a superfast introduction to the glories of this video-looping app via some of its budding auteurs, people like:
Vine's simple. Your mobile device doesn't start taking movies until you touch the screen. Finger off, it stops. Touch, it starts again. Repeat until you hit six seconds.
You have to make the video only with your device, no audio or visual imports. Can't edit, so everything's shot-after-shot, in sequence. No going back. Mess up? Start over.
You post the videos and use Twitter hashtags (#HarryPotter or #Cats) to attract viewers to shared interests. The app already has its stars, such as actor Adam Goldberg, former MADtv guy Will Sasso, Indonesian illustrator Pinot, and Nick Mastodon, the soi-disant "mash-up magician" from Minneapolis whose vines have 15,000 short-attention fans.
History on the vine
A Turkish journalist posted a vine after the Feb. 1 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. Doug Lorman's vine of live TV coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, which he happened to catch on TV and posted immediately, was "the first thing many people saw of the bombing," says Heacock. "It got 40,000 views and was shared all over the place." That planted a vineyard of citizen-journalist vines.
USA Today offers quick-preview vines of the day's paper. Some TV stations use it the same way. Rolling Stone posted an insta-famous vine of its Beatles covers. Brian Aguilar of MarketWatch animated a graphic of the Dow Jones' rapid rise. The BBC mashed up vines on the 200th birthday of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and on the horsemeat-hamburger scandal.
Vine crawls into politics: Freshman U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D., Calif.) vined himself submitting his first bill. It has been used in ads for General Electric, Gap, and Taco Bell - and Lowe' has made how-to vids on rethreading screws and mixing paint. The music biz swung from Vine early: Bands (Fall Out Boy, Pistol Annies) and performers (P!nk, Prince) use vines like concert clips, as fan glue.