Twitter bets on Vine

I somehow missed this news earlier that Twitter acquired Vine around October last year.  Apparently Jack Dorsey liked the Vine demo so much that he pushed for Twitter execs to acquire near-launch Vine.

Since the acquisition last year, the team Vine has been polishing their app and integrating it with Twitter for native display.  Just the other day Vine iPhone app has just hit the market.

The concept is really simple.  Vine lets you record video snippets up to 6 seconds, and share it with other users.  It acts and feels much like GIF animation in that it loops the video, but different from it in that it adds sounds.

Twitter community is starting to debate whether this is a good move for Twitter.  Some are concerned that adding video will complicate Twitter UX and cause Twitter to lose one of its key asset, simplicity.  Some believe that it is a brilliant move that readies Twitter for upcoming IPO (I don't think there is much disagreement in inevitability of its IPO).

I think it's a good move for Twitter.  Vine is a good addition for Twitter as it pursues to become a global real-time media channel.  Since Twitter had lost its bid to acquire Instagram to Facebook, Vine could be the one move ahead in building on its media ambition.

I also think that keeping Vine as separate network is a good strategy.  If loopy video upload feature is integrated into Twitter, then it may have lost its 140-character simplicity hence create some defectors from core user group.  Instead Twitter decided to keep Vine as separate network and to see if they can build a new user base who might be more comfortable sharing 6 second video collage with people.  

Because uploading video is a new concept to older generation, Vine will naturally attract younger more experimental users.  And this in turn will create context around how Vine is perceived and used.  By separating Vine, Twitter is trying to reach out to younger audience who have lot of interesting content to share, but have been shying away from posting tweets with 140 maximum characters.

Now the question is how Facebook would take to release its own video app.  Loopy Facebook Video office pool, anyone?