Twitter's New Vine Service

It was big news last fall when Twitter added a video component through its acquisition of Vine, a unique little service that lets users create gifs based off of a series of short video clips taken from a phone. Last week Twitter got people talking again when they re-launched Vine in the form of an iOS app, which some are referring to it as "Twitter's Instagram for video". Using Vine is relatively simple once you've downloaded the app. Videos are limited to a maximum of 6 seconds, and play in a continuous loop. In addition to creating your own videos, you can also explore other people's creations based on friends, category, editor's picks, or popularity.

Vine has received a lot of traffic and downloads since the launch. 6 days after launch, it ranked #6 among free apps on the Apple App Store. Some companies are already jumping on the bandwagon, talking about Vine as the newest must-have social media marketing tool. And there's already another service, called Just Vined, that lets you see the 20 most-recently added videos.