Making funny, artful, or interesting Vines is tough, but the 6-second video app has spawned a whole community of amazing creators. With today’s iOS update (out soon), Vine is shining more light on them by letting you follow entire channels like Comedy or Music to get the best editor-picked Vines in your main feed. The app is also now optimized for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and videos you shoot outside Vine can be instantly shared to it with the new iOS 8 sharing extensions.
Before, users had to open up Vine and upload a video before they could share. With the update, you’ll be able to record a video, press the little Send To button, and after choosing Vine as your preferred platform from the sharing extensions, Vine will automatically load up the video in the Trim and Crop screen of the app.
What really matters, though, is the new channel follow button. Previously, you either followed specific creators, or browsed the channels in the Discover section. The Comedy channel has actually become my (Josh’s) favorite source of content anywhere on the Internet. It’s filled with silly sight gags, hilarious video remixes, crazy soliloquies, and has become a breeding ground for web-wide memes. I’ve embedded in this post some of the best Vines I discovered in the Comedy channel. [Disclosure: Some Vine creators monetize through sponsorships negotiated by Niche, which was co-founded by Josh Constine’s cousin Darren Lachtman.]
The friction is that each time I want to watch Comedy, I have to actively go through a few clicks to reach the buried channel. And since each channel features around 200 top Vines, the algorithms that sort them sometimes let in content that’s not up to snuff.
With the channel follow button, you could just follow the Comedy channel, and the best Vines handpicked by the editors will show up amongst ones from friends and creators you follow directly. That makes Vine easier to browse, more accessible for casual users, and it could help Vine feel less like “star creators with millions of followers over here, and mere peasants with a few dozen followers over there”.