Show HN: Vinepeek - watch the world in realtime in 6 second snippets

As much as I dislike them, I also think they'll take off.

I can see them as another Instagram-like "useless" thing that is none-the-less popular because it's quick, illustrative and requires little effort. Think an animated GIF-like snapshot of your day.

(Bah humbug, etc.)

I suppose if we look at it as a medium for art than it's different. I saw a lot of what I described as utilitarian.

I use Twitter in the same way - it serves a purpose: I can connect with people or groups I need to ask questions of. I can share interesting stories / ideas that I find. I use it as a portal to those blog posts you mentioned, not as a replacement for them.

Outside of the art angle, I don't see myself "tuning in" to thumb through random 6 second videos. The Tokyo taxi scene isn't very interesting to me outside of context within a larger story, EXCEPT as a piece of art I can perhaps appreciate for 6 seconds and move on.

Like I said before, could be just me, I'm glad people are finding and enjoying a creative outlet that clearly speaks to something they enjoy doing :)

Vine is no different than any number of recent video sharing apps. Vine does nothing new but sets new arbitrary time limits on the videos they support. Just like the others Vine will try to convince you that through focus groups they have found "3 second" videos will revolutionize video sharing and discovery, but this is nothing new.

Examples:

Threadlife: Supports 3 second videos Viddy: Supports 15 second videos Animoto: Supports 30 second videos Klip: Supports 60 second videos

now Vine and its 6 second videos.

I am left wondering, what problem do all these video sharing apps think they are solving by setting arbitrary video time limits? Short videos might increase likelihood a user will sit through a whole video, but contrary to what these apps want you to believe they are not improving content quality through these arbitrary time limits. Further, time limits do not help users discovery quality content, so what problem have any of these apps solved?

The company that is dubbed the "Instagram of video" in the media is going to do the same thing Instagram did, improve content sharing and discovery. Of course, I hope my start up is that company, but even if not I think it is safe to say the company who deserves this title will not get it for setting video time limits as a result of focus groups.

Disclosure: I founded my own video sharing website with the goal to address the current problems with video sharing and discovery. I have done this by making Google Earth the UI for discovery of video content.