The word vine just referred to a stem at the start of 2013. Now Vine, the newest smart phone application, is a six second claim to fame and even a source of income.
This new application owned by Twitter allows users to create a six second video loop that has the ability to be shared across social media formats. According to The 7th Chamber, a video seeding company, five tweets per second contain a vine link.
“Some of the effort that is put into those videos is insane,” said senior Kathleen Stuart.
Freshman Austin Rider said if he was passionate about making videos then he would enjoy making Vine videos for a living.
“It does not seem like something that is long term, but if that is the way they make their money then that’s okay,” said Rider.
Some Vine users have used this application to their advantage. In the case of 15 year-old Nash Grier he only needed 12 minutes to gain 1.4 million followers.
Little did Grier know that downloading this new application and creating six second videos would cause him to be “vine-famous.”
Grier currently has 2,798, 129 followers and is ranked number nine of the top 1,000 Vine users, according to rankzoo.com.
That is 29 spots ahead of Ellen DeGeneres and 59 spots ahead of Miley Cyrus.
As of June this application has amassed more than 13 million viewers according to Gabrielle Karol of FOX Business. Currently with the new craze of the mobile app brands and businesses have taken notice and taken advantage of Vine as well.
Businesses such as Lowe’s, Mazda, Nike and Virgin Mobile are creating Vine-based ad campaigns and paying the “Vine-ographers” to produce their Vine ad campaigns.
“[Vine] campaigning is probably 90 percent of my income right now,” said Meagan Cignoli, a well-known Vine influencer. While many are enjoying the profits of this new form of social media, others are bewildered and disconcerted by Vine’s sudden influence and means of creating income for users.
“It’s cool, but I think it is ridiculous that someone could get famous off of six seconds,” said Stuart when asked about her interest in Vine. Yet Stuart said she still finds herself watching Vine videos on Facebook and on her friends’ phones.
Whether Vine is simply entertainment or a business will be left to the way it continues to develop.