Vine – does Twitter’s new iPhone app hold any business value?

Many businesses have taken to the 140-character message broadcasting of Twitter for a litany of business purposes.

Whether it’s providing customer service, marketing a product or service, or diving deep into engagement and audience cultivation, it’s hardly debated any more about the social network’s value to business despite its abbreviated post lengths. But Twitter has launched a new service that once again challenges how short something can be and still contain value.

Vine is the first new app launch from Twitter, since well, Twitter. (You could count TweetDeck, but that was launched before the company was acquired by Twitter.) It’s an app released to iOS yesterday that allows users to shoot six-second long videos and embed them in tweets or post them to Facebook. Vine is currently only available in an iPhone app form – there’s no Web-based interface or Android app. It’s inherently mobile.

Users shoot the six-second clips by touching and holding the screen to record footage. When you release the touch, the recording pauses. In this way, it’s easy to put together a multi-shot video that requires no editing. Early Vine posts show creative uses of the medium including a mouse that seemingly comes to life and crawls across a desk, a beard growing competition that ends in a surprising result, and a very quick lesson in how to make beef tartar.

Scrolling through the posts on Vine is entertaining and has a sort of captivating effect. By making the videos play automatically – almost like animated GIFs – the Vine Labs Inc. team has made it as easy as possible to consume a large amount of the content. Just scroll down the page and watch the videos as they come into view.

But is mere amusement where the value of Vine ends? It’s hard to see how businesses could make use of the app for something more practical. If you’re using Vine in an interesting way or plan an experiment for your business, then let us know in the comments section.

Source | Twitter blog