Vine for Android | Hacker News Reader

Vine for Android

vine.co

104 pointsjcfrei69 comments

Vine seems awesome, but it has a fundamental issue that I just can't get past: I can't easily add my friends from Facebook. Now that isn't Vine's (or Twitter's) fault, it's due to Facebook's new policies[1], a policy that was nearly too late and required them to buy out Instagram.

I don't know how a company can help someone find their current Facebook friends, and match that with users of their social network, but it is one of the essential cogs[2] to usurp Facebook as the dominant social network

[1] "You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission" https://developers.facebook.com/policy/ (section I.10)

[2] Finding existing friends is only one of the essential parts to growing a vibrant social network. You also need a stable and clear platform for people to communicate/share, and a novel feature/s to give people an excuse to try it out (e.g. Facebooks was more pics and tagging, G+ was circles/hangouts, Instagram was filters, etc).

I find that an interesting contrast to my position. If anything even mentions facebook I avoid it. Social network integration to me is a privacy concern, and it's overuse a social liability.

what's also really annoying, is that there's no way to search just by username; in case you dont want connect via fb or twitter at all.

there is. it's search by username. unless you're talking about android, where the answer is "real soon now!"

As an android user I'm glad I can finally contribute meaningful content such as this https://vine.co/v/b36jXQnxpQF

I had thought that Vine was something akin to Google Hangouts until now.

So now I know instead that it is a simple to use, high quality animated gif generator... Which I guess isn't such a bad thing. It certainly has entertainment value (I'm not really of the camp that believes that every company has to make world-changing products)

I wouldn't think of it that way, more like Twitter for video sharing. By adding an arbitrary limit to what you can share - 140 characters for Twitter, 6.5s for Vine - and removing all friction between making the thing and sharing it, it removes the pressure of feeling like you need to make something good or polished, and you're more likely to share.

Mobile has gone way too far in this direction IMO. Making it easier to share mostly means not only that people post a ton of crap but they're too ADD to take the time to understand and appreciate content with more substance. Stuff like this dumbs us down.

Sounds like Keek, which has been doing it for 2 years already.

People wanted GIFs with sound, they got GIFs with sound.

Maybe I'm just an entitled jerk, but I get slightly annoyed when a popular app decides to limit itself to a single platform, and then release later. I subconsciously didn't bother with Instagram because it took so long to get onto Android, and to be honest even though I like Vine it's been out for a while now and to be honest I doubt I'll bother downloading it unless I feel a real urge to use it.

I find programming for iOS easier. I also think the target market on iOS is better quality than the Android one, despite of raw market share they are a lot of small and underpowered Android devices out of there.

If I were creating an startup with a mobile app I would definitely launch on iOS first, test the waters and see how that goes. If it works then I would start thinking about launching in other platforms.

While true, there is little stopping a team from supporting a set of high-powered Android devices.

The difference between Vine and a startup are obvious. Vine has teams for iOS, Android, and specific design, whereas a startup typically starts off with one or two devs at most. Twitter are known for being iOS fans, so they were always going to tailor their product towards iOS.

Vine started out as a small (3 person) startup that Twitter acquired just before their launch. Could they, post acquisition, have gotten the android version out quicker, maybe, but it's unlikely that they could have built the backend, an ios, and an android app with the amount of polish the ios app had at launch and launched at the same time with just the 3 people they had prior to the acquisition.

It almost seems to be a "marketing" "strategy", designed to re-ignite interest.

It's hard enough figuring out a product in the early days, even harder if you've got to support multiple platforms.

There are numerous mobile agencies around the world today, making apps for simultaneous release on multiple platforms. I don't buy this argument when we're talking about large teams with dedicated design and development teams for each platform.

Vine probably had the resources to work on an Android version, but a decision was made to support iOS only from the start.

Finally. I recently switched to a Galaxy S4 and lack of Vine was disheartening to me. I'm glad to finally see a popular app make its way into the worlds most popular app store. I wish more high-profile apps would launch with iOS and Android in mind instead of just iOS, us Android users love cool apps too.

I'm actually quite happy with the app parody we're reaching. Most, if not all, of the apps on my Galaxy Nexus home-screen are available on both platforms.

Hilarious slip. Think you meant parity.

Well shit, just noticed this. :p

> app parody

My thoughts exactly on most Android apps :p

(I say this as current Android user, ex-iPhone user, and an ex-Googler).

Does anyone else find this app sort of overwhelming? Not necessarily in a bad way either.

I remember when my boss showed me a flurry of vines from her trip to Washington DC, I found myself feeling a bit disoriented as I tried to catch up with the rapidly switching contexts of each video.

The same things happens to me when I'm scrolling through a feed. It's strange to me that it doesn't happen with pictures, but I can only describe it as being teleported through the globe in rapid-fire mode.

Am I just an old fogey at the ripe old age of 31?

No I feel the same way at age 21. It's quite hard to follow the quick-cutting nature of most videos. The ones I tend to like the most are comedy videos that have really quick setups and punchlines.

Yet another app that can access all your contacts and potentially steal/spam your adressbook. I know this is standard practice on iOS, but it really isn't acceptable.

I don't think many apps are really in the business of being evil.

I don't really understand this unfounded paranoia that apps are designed by evil people to do evil things.

That's not entirely the point. Most of the news we've seen here during the past years are about people breaking into these apps' (sometimes improperly secured) servers and then suddenly having access to all this private data about millions of users.

"Better safe than sorry"

Really surprised they are getting away with 4.0 and later. That would be like a dream come true for me to make an app that only supports those versions.

Pre-4.0 is down to about a 1/3 these days (http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) but it's also probably the 1/3 least likely to use Vine.

I'm in the 1st 1/3, but not the 2nd.

Finally. I love seeing high quality apps make it to Android.

Annoyed. I uploaded my first Vine and am connected to Twitter but the share option isn't appearing under the "More" (three dots) menu.

Looks like someone has a case of the Monday's

You said it.

Okay, it just took a really long time for Vine to share it to Twitter.

Amazing how fast Vine has grown since it launched (in January), from Mary Meeker's report on the internet:

http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trend...

I wonder how this will affect Instagram usage.

For maximum effectiveness users will purchase Projecteo slides of their Instagram photos, then Vine themselves doing shadow puppets over the projections.

This is exactly what my startup, Vinecteogram, does. Check us out on the App Store!

Great! I was looking for a mobile-first version of YouTwitFace.com.

I have no idea if this conversation is satirical or not.

Someone already managed to upload the full music video of "Never Gonna Give You Up", but apparently Twitter asked the user to take it down:

https://twitter.com/ws/status/341684952276029442

Can someone explain what the use case of vine is? Why would I want to use it?

Looks to me like they're replacing GIFs. Short clips, muted by default. If they succeed this will be a welcome change for the internet because video compression has advanced significantly since the days of GIFs.

It's more of a tweet-like approach to posting videos. The way I see most of my friends using the service is as a companion to Instagram, when they want to express a moment in a series of small video clips instead of in a single photo. I suppose you could call that "replacing GIFs" but it's more like YouTube than it is like Geocities.

There were a few companies that attempted to do this ( http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/after-its-12-seconds-of-fam... ) but Vine got it right:

* Timing: More people have camera phones / 3G/4G/LTE * Aping the existing Instagram structure for the news feed * Probably initially used AWS backend for cheap storage * Native App focus first and foremost * Immediate acquisition by Twitter

It's little video snippets, 7s max. They don't always click, but when they do, it feels like you're catching flashes of someone else's memory.

One advantage is your friends will not watch another one of your uncut boring vacation videos. But they might still watch your vines, since they're so short.

twitter for video (140 chars == 6s)

Thank God.

Finally.

This is a monumental milestone in innovation. Honored to be part of a society where Vine on Android makes the HN front page.

This is our generation's moon shot.

Elon Musk only wishes he were a part of this

But would he pay his workers in Bitcoins?

I think he would pay them with Zynga shares.

Don't feed the trolls, this isn't Reddit.

I've been waiting for this. Now, only if a single one of the android phones had a decent camera, I'd be in business.

I'd consider the camera on the HTC One as one of the best mobile cameras available.

It will be interesting to see if HTC tries to set up some sort of Zoe to Vine integration.

Is there a possibilty to make vines private for a personal travel diary? It would be really handy.

agreed. would love a tool like this. would use it to make something like this: http://www.ted.com/talks/cesar_kuriyama_one_second_every_day...

I've got three random followers the first day I setup a vine account, even though I had no vines uploaded yet. I really don't want every vine I make to be shared publicly. This definitely limits my usage of this app.

it's way to difficult to find your friends on the Android version, especially when you can't search by username

Holy Capacity issues batman. the vines are not loading for me...

This app is incompatible with your Virgin Mobile LGE VM670.

Ewww!!!

Painfully slow and clunky non-native app. Crashed thrice on my Galaxy Nexus 4.2.2. Closed it. Not using as of now.

Guess, I'll wait for a few updates or patches before uninstalling. Or maybe I'll reinstall after it's stable enough.

By the way, I don't think there's a way to browse Vine on the web, is it?

App had it seems pre-subscribed to some of the users/streams/or-vines-maybe, because my feed is not empty and I don't see a way to empty it and then maybe subscribe to users/handles I would find fitting to my taste(I doubt that seeing all the animations).

You might try http://www.vpeeker.com for an overwhelming web experience.

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