Twitter Releases Vine For Android; 13 Million Users Already On Video Looping App

Twitter announced on Monday that the popular Vine app, which iPhone users have been using since January to record short looping video clips, is now available to Android phones. The Vine app allows users to record video for a maximum of six seconds when they touch their screens and stops recording when they release. This makes it easy to create GIF-like videos with sound and stop-motion animation, and several artists, brands and celebrities have found creative ways to use it.

The Vine app was created by Twitter, so of course there is deep integration with the microblogging social network. Users can also follow people, like with Twitter (even from Twitter), to see their Vine videos in their feeds, and sharing Vine videos to Twitter allows followers to watch them right in Twitter.

More than 13 million people have used the Vine app, according to Twitter, and it works mostly the same as Twitter with the addition of the video recording. The explore function shows popular and trending posts.

Some features that iPhone users enjoy are not yet ready for Android, such as front-facing camera support, search, mentions, hashtags and sharing to Facebook. Twitter did give the Android version of the Vine app the ability to zoom, a function not available on iOS phones.

“Of course, this is only the beginning -- we have exciting plans for features that could exist only on Android,” Sara Haider, an Android engineer for Twitter, wrote on Twitter’s blog.

The Vine app is now available as a free download from the Google Play store. It requires a device running Android 4.0+.

Are you excited to finally start using Vine on your Android phone? How well does it work so far? Let us know in the comments section.

Follow Ryan W. Neal on Twitter