Vine is the latest and hottest new mobile service available in Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch from Twitter that lets the users capture and share short 6-second videos. Expecting the same degree of creativity that people exhibited in their Tweets, Vine is yet to dictate the creative outcome from such time restriction in capturing motion and sound.
This new iPhone app promises a lot of potential as it encourages users to be creative in telling their stories aided by short span video clips. While this new video-sharing app from Twitter continues to attract people sharing moments in a rather unique way, some experts deem that some features that would possibly cause Vine’s unprecedented success are still lacking and keeping many users from really giving their all-out support to Vine. Some of the things to be changed about Vine should include:
1. Desktop Management. The app does not provide any feature for users sharing a vine to interact with. The link displays a user’s profile picture but that’s about it. The app should allow users to have the ability to manage posts, likes and profile and as an added feature, providing a way to organize all of the vines online would be pretty cool.
2. Ability to Save Vines. With all the apps available in the market today, users get frustrated with apps that don’t allow saving of content – text, image, video, etc. Regardless of the reason for such inability, Vine should have a feature that counters this disadvantage. Users should be able to save vines just like a Twitter draft before the bugs ruin it. The feature should also allow the users to craft quality content which will automatically encourage more creative contents.
3. Ability to Manage Multiple Accounts. Vine lacks sharing capabilities that cater to multiple accounts. While private Twitter account can be created solely for the purpose of uploading vines, the app does not allow the user to manage multiple accounts. So, users who have restrictions on sharing the vines now with the entire social audience may be a little short-handed by this lacking feature. It would be more functional if Vine will allow people managing a personal and business-related account to have the ability to select which account the vines should be uploaded to.
4. Audio. This is one of the distinct features that make Vine stand out from the rest. Users should be able to replace the choppy sound that usually accompanies cuts with a feature that allows laying of separately created audio over the post. The Vine feature should also provide the option for the users to remove sound as and when necessary.
5. Editing Functions. When recording a content, the users would love to have features that would allow them to zoom through a button on the bottom. The entire capture screen acts as a record button but it would be cool to have an omnipresent button to press when they need to zoom the video. Additionally, focusing the objects before recording will eliminate the blurry and distracting vines.
6. Using Front Facing Camera. iPhone has this feature and Vine should have taken advantage of it – being able to switch from the device’s two cameras. This could potentially open new avenues for creative dialogue vines.
7. Recognition Feature. While the app allows users to find friends, it does not have an accurate way of executing that. The recognition feature doesn’t seem to work and users eventually have to adopt manual search of people using the app. Users should have a platform that will search for their friends more accurately.
8. Access to New Content. Vine users navigate the “Explore” tab when they want to look for new and interesting content. But this tab relies on specific editors to hand-pick new vines. Users would prefer to discover new content and users through an enhanced browsing feature, which can be web-based.
9. Better Engagement/Interaction. Vine while intended to be a social app fails in this department. Aside from posting comments, no other form of engagement is allowed, not even tagging. Vine should at least allow users to tag people in captions and comments. In Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the symbol “@” is used as a way to tag someone. On Vine, the same “@” symbol just sync Twitter contacts to Vine.
An application’s success solely depend on its usability. If your application lacks in so much feature and if your developed application is supposed to work as a social media platform, then being really social and user friendly should not be eliminated. Yes, there will be suggested improvements once the developed application is out in the market and the catered market cries out for some added features. What is important is you know how to listen to have longer shelf life.
