Vine shoots for more virality with redesigned website
Adding sections for search and discovery, the people behind Twitter's loopy video service are giving the general public a front row seat to view the app's hidden gems.
Just four months after making its online debut, video app Vine is already making over its Web home, Vine.co, this time with an emphasis on letting anyone, not just members, appreciate the special quirks of the service's 6-second videos.
Thursday, the Twitter-owned service is going live with a reworked site that provides a replete Vine experience for those who don't have accounts or would rather not log in. The redesign is centered around showcasing the best the app has to offer by way of featured videos and playlists, channels for exploration, trending tags, and hand-selected video picks in the hopes of turning a passive observer into an active one.
Vine is the playful video app from Twitter that lets people share pieced-together mini mobile flicks that are just 6 seconds in length and play on repeat. The application is especially popular with YouTube stars and comedians, and has a fan base of 40 million registered users. Earlier this month, Vine introduced a messaging component to give people a way to exchange private video or text messages.
Previously, Vine.co was a restricted site with little to see or do without an account. People could only check out other's online profiles or log in to the view their own video feeds.
Now with the hey-look-what-we-have theme of the revamped website, Vine has the opportunity to expand beyond its niche and reach the masses with online videos that are bigger and potentially more engaging when viewed from computer screens.
Thus far, Vine's ability to help videos go viral has been hindered by the fact that most of its treasures are buried in the mobile application and unavailable to the general public. Some of the website's new sections, like "channels" and "popular now," will be familiar to the app's mobile members. When those sections were first added to the mobile app last July, they did wonders to help expose content and turn 6-second video makers into Vine stars. Vine would presumably like to repeat that success with Thursday's Web release.
Meanwhile, Twitter, Vine's parent company, reported first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, and even though the company's $250 million in revenue and break-even profit were better than analysts expected, Wall Street wasn't pleased by the social network's growth and 2014 sales forecast, and shares fell more than 10 percent.