Vine, Twitter’s six-second short form video service, updated its iOS app today and released a few ways to share videos. Starting today, users who share their Vines on Twitter or Facebook, can easily embed them on the web. Before, users were required to share a Vine to Twitter first, and then embed the entire Tweet on the web, in order for the Vine to show up.
Vine describes their posts as, “little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.” Today’s announcement and app update will make sharing these “little windows,” that much easier.
The updated Vine app helps with the sharing of other users’ Vines too. The share and embed option only works if the Vine has been previously shared on Twitter or Facebook. As TheNextWeb explains, sharing Vine’s from the app, “isn’t a simple process though.”
“From any feed, users need to hit the ellipsis icon nestled underneath the video and tap ‘Share this post.’ The Twitter and Facebook options are fairly self-explanatory, but choosing the embed option will trigger a new email with an altered link for the Vine webpage.”
Twitter is stepping up their game with the ability to now embed their short form Vine videos on the web. Facebook’s Instagram, a photo based social network, does not have the ability to easily embed their photos on the web. Sure, modern installs of WordPress and WordPress.com makes embedding Instagram photos easy, but a direct embed option is not yet unavailable.
Keep an eye on embedding of content from Instagram, they might get the message now that Vine allows for this and for sharing of other Vines via their iOS app, a curiously unavailable option on Instagram’s apps.
To embed a Vine on the web add “/embed” to the end of a link. The options presented are, “simple and postcard.” From there, size options are, “600px, 480px and 320px.” A preview of exactly what the Vine will look like is presented in real-time. Below the preview is a text box that includes the embeddable code. Right now, iframe is the only way to embed a Vine, maybe an HTML5 option will appear in the future.
Postcard 320px option selected from @24k on Twitter
The simple Vine embed option displays just the video, with sound muted and the video on loop. To see the text associated with the Vine, hover the mouse over the looping video and it then displays the user who created it and when it was uploaded. The postcard embed moves the Vine logo to the top right of the window, displays the user and time of creation on the top left and the text shows up at the bottom. It looks more like a Polaroid print than a postcard, but its nice that the Vine watermark was moved away from the video itself.
A simultaneously updated website and app is a smart move for Twitter’s Vine, one that other iPhone app only social networks should take notice of.
Download Vine today from the iTunes Apple App Store.
The graphics on this post are from Vine.