Given the popularity of Vine compilations on YouTube, Vine’s decision to allow people to explore and view its six second videos on its homepage makes a lot of sense.
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As the Twitter owned service explains in an official blog post that until now, anyone wanting to view Vines has to do using the Vine app for whichever mobile OS they’re on.
Given that, it also makes sense that it’s borrowed features from the mobile app for the website. On opening the page, for instance, you will be able to see the Explore page, which features familiar channels like Places and Animals alongside Trending Tags and Popular Now.
It does however say that it’s introduced a couple of new web-specific features, including hand-curated content, something it reckons will make it easier for you to “find great videos and accounts”.
Perhaps most notably however, the website allows you to do view Vines without having to log-in, something which (obviously) you can’t do on the mobile app. It’s also added a search bar that allows you to look for people, specific tags and locations.
As Wired notes, the decision to not require logins means that Vine is more of a competitor to the likes of YouTube than mobile social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat.
Given that, it seems likely that its revenue model — on the web at least — will more closely resemble that of YouTube. Given the brevity of its videos however, any adverts on the platform will, by necessity, have to be much shorter than the ones on YouTube.
While it’s bound to present more of a challenge for Vine, it’s unlikely you’ll hear any user complaints on that front.
One other thing: the move is very obviously an indication that the web is still an incredibly valuable space for content and that we’re still a fair way away from finding a truly winning method for monetising mobile social apps.
