How To: Twitter's New Vine App Lets You Embed GIF-Style Videos into Your Tweets

I can't say that I'm a huge Tweeter, but I'm definitely a good follower. Having the ability to follow comedians, brands, and athletes helps me stay up to date on the things I'm interested in, and I appreciate being thrown a good joke every now and then.

Also, it's nice to see a good pic every once in a while, since a picture is worth a thousand words, especially since Twitter limits you to only 140 characters. But what's even better than photos? Videos. Thankfully, Twitter just announced the launch of its first official video service, Vine.

For right now, Vine is currently only available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad in the iTunes Store, but they're currently developing apps for other platforms, too, most likely Android and Windows Phone.

Vine provides unlimited uploads, and allows people to record up to 6 seconds of video, which will then loop just like a GIF does. This is similar to another popular app, Cinemagram, but Vine gives you up to 6 seconds compared to Cinemagram's 4 seconds. It's also much smoother and gives you sound!

A video is first uploaded to Vine, then can be shared to Twitter, where it embeds directly inside of your tweet for instant viewing. You can also share your Vine videos to Facebook.

Now, there are plenty of apps that allow you to post videos to Twitter. Twitvid and yfrog are two of the most popular video-sharing clients. But these clients only provide links to your videos, which then can be viewed on their own website. Vine goes a step further and places your video right into your tweet, kinda like how Twitter used to embed Instagram images.

Vine looks like it is going to be a very popular application, so go ahead and try it for yourself. But try to do a better job than these guys please.