I follow 2 out of the 3 people on Vine that I discuss in this post. The third person is fine, too! I just don’t follow him. Sorry!
I don’t claim to have insight into their personalities, beliefs, dispositions, emotions, or anything. But I think something odd has happened. Very odd.
First, a little background.
Vine is a Twitter-owned app where people can post 6 second videos from their phones.
Instagram is a phone app which was bought by Facebook in April, 2012, and until yesterday, was strictly used for making/manipulating/sharing photos. Now, Instagram hosts videos as well. You can record up to 15 seconds of video, as well as apply one of a series of preset filters.
Vine has around 13 million users, while Instagram has around 130 million users.
There are lots of people who have made Vine videos (myself included), but some people have risen to the top and gotten a certain degree of popularity/celebrity from their posts. Actors James Urbaniak (Henry Fool, Venture Bros.), Will Sasso (Mad TV), and Adam Goldberg (The Hebrew Hammer, Dazed & Confused) are three such people.
What I find interesting is how the announcement of Instagram’s foray into short videos might have an effect on them. I’m not going to predict the future and say Instagram will supplant Vine, but I think it’s certainly going to draw some people away from the platform. Two of my Twitter friends joined Instagram today, with one admitting that it was due to the introduction of Instagram video (Hi, Rob!).
James, Adam, and Will have accounts on Vine and Instagram. However, their Vine accounts are screamingly more popular than their Instagram accounts.
JAMES URBANIAK
WILL SASSO
ADAM GOLDBERG
Okay, let’s break this down.
Urbaniak Vine (22,225) / Urbaniak Instagram (403) = 55.15, which means Urbaniak is 55 times more popular on Vine than he is on Instagram.
Sasso Vine (854,800) / Sasso Instagram (31,000) = 27.57
Goldberg Vine (123,100) / Goldberg Instagram (2,352) = 52.34
Again, I have no idea in hell what is going through their minds at this point. Did these guys have any clue that they would have found some degree of notoriety on Vine in the first place? Do they see a cool thing vaporizing with the possible dwindling popularity of Vine? Do they feel threatened? I HAVE NO IDEA. But it’s an interesting, weird thing to think about.
All three of them *have* addressed the advent of video on Instagram. Here’s their take on it.
On Vine, James Urbaniak flips the bird to Instagram. As of this post’s writing he has yet to post a video to Instagram (his last post there was from last week, and he has only posted 15 photos in total).
NOTE: Vine videos are muted by default. If you want to hear a video, hover over it, then click the speaker with the red X to unmute.
Will Sasso seems to find the extra time a little too liberating. He takes a classic Sasso Vine trope (“Lemons!”) and stretches it out to the full Instagram running time.
He made a Vine of the first few seconds of the above video, too.
Yesterday on Vine, Adam Goldberg spoofed the release of Instagram.
The next day, on Instagram, he denies he is in the pocket of “Big Vine”.
He plays around with the format in Instagram, and (jokingly) finds he has too much time on his hands.
Urbaniak here. My Instagram account (which is fairly recent) is essentially private, my Vine account is public. I only share Instagram photos with private Facebook friends. (I think I shared one Instagram of Doc Hammer on my public Tumblr but that was it.) Meanwhile, I link all my Vines on my public Twitter account. So that’s the reason for the follower disparity. Anyway, I like the Vine app and was just goofily dissing Instagram’s new video app because I thought it would be funny. Hope this de-weirds my behavior for you!
Oh, there was no need to de-weird anything. I thought your Vine was funny. This post just arose from a cool social thing I saw potentially happening (and perhaps it was all in my head), and thought I would remark on it. Thanks for your comment!