why you really need / really don't need vine

Video can tell stories. It can engage. Vine is an application that allows iphone users to record six seconds of video and post to Twitter. With instagram you get a similar service but 15 seconds and smartphone users can use it too. It's the VHS v Betamax of mobile video. But here are two very contrasting views.  

by Emily Turner and Dan Slee

Yes, you do...

 

What’s the point of short video? Let’s forget that Vine (13 million downloads in its first week) and Instagram (130 million users) are social media platforms for a moment. Let’s focus on what they enable you to do quickly, cheaply and on-the-fly - produce content. 

 

You need content and story telling for successful social media. Content creation is challenging because of time, resource, tools, approvals process and budget. 

 

Vine and Instagram allow you to put together a video news-in-brief to educate, demonstrate, curate a human face, make announcements and show behind-the-scenes. 

 

You can capture what's happening around you with a reportage style, from the council chamber, media setting up to interview, photo calls, winter service prep, staff at work, the groundworks for a new school, guides to form filling or where to find information...the list is endless. 

 

YouTube has its role, but these new tools allow visual content to be captured easily and shared immediately, Vine to Twitter and Instagram to Facebook. Vine’s embed code can be used for web pages and blogs, meaning further reach for your snippets. You can also use the platforms for interaction, see Airbnb’s brilliant crowdsourced film from Vinehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laCLVzWpS0I.

 

What’s the ROI? Visual content has the highest value and Hootsuite research showed videos are shared 12x more on Facebook compared to text posts. While Vine is new, research company Socialbakers examined 30,000 tweets with Vine and YouTube links and found Vine’s engagement rates nearly matched YouTube’s. 

 

Not convinced? Mobile internet use is increasing (it will overtake desktop internet by 2014 - Microsoft Tag) and patience is decreasing (74% of consumers abandon sites taking more than five seconds to load - Gomez).

 

Consumers want succinct information they can download fast via mobile. Vary your video output with short film, have fun and be your creative best.

 

Short film creative heroes:

Vine: ASOS , Urban Outfitters , GAP  Instagram: Red Bull extreme sports , Burberry catwalk , Adidas Originals customer rhyming competition.

No you don't...

by Dan Slee

There's a great line somewhere about inventing a solution to a problem that never was a problem. 

That, ladies and gentlemen is Vine. A solution to the six-second video headache that never was a headache.

If you don't know what it is it's an app that iphone people can use that produces six seconds of video on a loop. There's another one that's 15-seconds for Instagram too. I'm offended by that too. But it's the six seconds of Vine that really sticks a sharp stick up my nose. 

Both are solutions to things that are not problems. Not only that, they're pointless hipster solutions to things that are not even hipster problems. At 3am the people who have ever worked on this must wake up and know deep, deep down, really deep down, that their life has not contributed by one micro-degree to the collective knowledge of humanity.

One wag on Twitter suggested I record a Vine to describe my absolute loathing for the platform. That's just it. I can't. It takes more than six seconds. But if pressed can I offer the observation: "There's already a video platform, dude. It's called YouTube."

First things first. I do rate video. I also rate the need to record content. Luckily, every smartphone has a really good video camera attached. It can also upload to YouTube. Or Vimeo. Or another service. If you fancy recording more or less than six seconds you can. Isn't that just the most amazing thing ever? You dreammaker! 

I also know that shorter is often better on the web. Six seconds is just like 140 characters on Twitter, runs the argument. It's a taster. But the thing is that Twitter can sign post with a shortened link to a far longer thing. What does Vine do? It repeats itself. Over. And over. 

I'm thinking about the good video content I've seen recently. That TED Talk of Tim Berners Lee talking about Open Data. Mark Stein scoring for Stoke City against Manchester United in 1993. My children sending a get well message to their poorly uncle from a few years ago. On Vine, Tim wouldn't even had got onto stage, the players would have got out of the tunnel and my children wouldn't have started messing about let alone have stopped.

I've sat through dozens of Vines. Not one of them has been worth a second viewing. Not one could not have done better with more - or less - footage.

Stop. It. Now. If you need video do it properly. Which could be less or more than six seconds.

Thank you for listening.

More than six second films I've enjoyed of late: Man on a crane, Amy Kaherl talking about Detroit Soup at TEDxRedding, Fleet Foxes live in Paris and Internalcomms TV by Rachel Miller.

Emily Turner is content and marketing strategist at Deeson Creative.

Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.

Picture credit.