Vine hits impressive 40 million users. The key? Comedy
In a very nonchalant tweet Tuesday, Vine announced that it has now surpassed 40 million users.
How much growth is that? A whopping 207% since it hit 13 million just two months ago.
Though Vine has only been around since January, it has quickly become a leader in the short-video market, and a big reason for that is its users, whom are passionate about making six-second videos with the iPhone and Android app.
Vine has had to compete with rivals that came before it -- such as Viddy, Kik and Tout -- and Instagram, which added video as a feature in June, but the Twitter-video service separated itself from the crowd by quickly finding its niche: comedy.
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Not long after launching, some Vine users quickly gained thousands of followers thanks to hilarious clips they were posting. With just six seconds, users have a short time to deliver a quick punch line, and many Vine users have perfected this craft. Their videos become extra funny thanks to Vine’s loop feature, which will play a video over and over again until a user stops it or moves on to another Vine.
With so many funny videos, Vine has become the comedy club of many users’ smartphones.
And Vine gets constant promotion from websites that promote the app’s funniest videos. VineScope.com, for example, shows some of the latest funny videos uploaded to the app. Best Vines, a Facebook page, does the same thing.
If aren’t familiar with Vine and its funny videos, check out this nearly 12-minute long YouTube compilation of Vine videos.
Instagram, meanwhile, has not found a niche when it comes to videos, and that’s why not many Instagram videos have gone viral.
Many Instagram users use the app to share their artistic pictures, and that may be why comedy hasn’t proliferated there -- it’d be like playing “America’s Funniest Home Videos” at an art museum.
Unless Facebook can figure out a way to entice users to post their videos on Instagram, Twitter should have no trouble getting Vine to grow even bigger.
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