If you haven’t heard it through the grapevine already, video-sharing apps are the next major technology to capture brands’ — and consumers’ — attention, a sort of “next generation” to still-image-sharing sites like Instagram and Pinterest.
And if Vine, the most prominent of the apps, continues as it has been, it will likely prove to be a very fruitful venture for Twitter and its bottom line.
Twitter acquired the then-unlaunched six-second video-sharing service in October 2012, and Vine launched as a stand-alone app in January.
According to Alex Tarantino, head technology and digital media analyst at PrivCo, “Advertising powers that be have started to accept Vine as the next big thing in social video-sharing.”
Like Twitter and Facebook, Vine has already become an important extension for brands and is quickly becoming an integral part of their social-media strategies.
Diverse businesses — including GE, Kraft Foods and Taco Bell — have been using 6-second video segments to engage consumers.
With a custom hashtag, #ASOSUnbox, the online-shopping brand invites consumers to share their own Vine videos of opening ASOS deliveries.
Josh Rosenberg, senior vice president/director, FirstWord Digital at M Booth, says, “Vine enables real-time visual storytelling in a way that’s never been done before. It is easy to use and allows brands to share what’s happening around them. . . . It allows brands to go beyond their 140 characters on Twitter and tell a compelling story in just six seconds.”
It’s a natural extension for visual-based brands. According to Brett Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates, “Studios will want to offer 6-second clips of TV programs and movies. Brands will see these [video-sharing] sites as an opportunity to leverage social media to promote their offerings in a way that was not possible with text alone.”
There’s also big potential for economic rewards for Twitter, a company that is continually looking for ways to successfully monetize its platform.
“It [Twitter] started launching promoted tweets — now it costs $200,000 a day for promoted tweets,” Tarantino says.
There is at least one public-relations snag, however: Both Vine and a similar app, Snapchat, have made headlines for sexting posts.