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Vine adds front-facing camera functionality

Twitter's video app now works with front- and rear-facing cameras. It's also possible to name-check people in posts.

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Daniel Terdiman Former Senior Writer / News
Daniel Terdiman is a senior writer at CNET News covering Twitter, Net culture, and everything in between.
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Daniel Terdiman
Vine now allows users to shoot with both their front- and rear-facing cameras and to include someone else's name in a post. Twitter

Twitter said today that it has updated its stand-alone Vine mobile app to allow users to shoot video with both their front- and rear-facing cameras.

In a blog post, Twitter also said that Vine users now can tag someone in a post, meaning that people can, for example, shoot a video with a friend and add that person's name, or Twitter handle, in the post.

With the old version, users could only use the rear-facing cameras on their iPhones. Also, while it was possible to enter someone's name or Twitter ID in the associated text of a Vine post, the service didn't have functionality to automatically recognize that name or alert the person mentioned. With the Vine 1.1 update, the service will auto-identify names; if a user starts to type @chris, it will suggest a list of associated IDs. The person mentioned also will get a notification after the post goes live.

Making it possible to shoot Vines with both cameras on a mobile device is a step forward, given that it means people will be able to shoot video of themselves more easily.

Despite the new features available in Vine 1.1 -- which is available in the Apple App Store -- the service still is not available for Android or other mobile operating systems.