A little more than four months after Twitter unveiled its video service, Vine, the company has launched Vine for Android.
"Starting today, you can begin to shoot, share and watch short looping videos," wrote Sara Haider, an Android engineer at Twitter, in a blog post. "We've been looking forward to this day, and we're excited to get the app into your hands."
Vine is a service that lets mobile users capture and share short, looping videos. And we're talking seriously short: Each Vine video lasts six seconds or less.
When it first launched, Vine only was available for the Apple iPhone and the iPod Touch as a free download in the App Store. Twitter said at the time it was working on making Vine available on other platforms.
Android owners running version 4.0 or newer of the mobile OS can download Vine from Google Play.
"Vine for Android has many of the features that more than 13 million people have grown to love: easy video creation with automatic playback and sound; Explore, where you can discover popular posts and see what's trending; and Find Friends, where you can find and invite people you know to join," wrote Haider. "You can also share your posts to Twitter. People will be able to watch them right within your Tweet."
Android users also get a feature that iOS users do not: zoom.
Haider noted that Twitter has been updating Vine for the iPhone and iPad, which means Vine for iOS and the version for Android aren't now in synch. Twitter, though, says that won't be an issue for long.
"Over the coming weeks, you'll see frequent updates with new features -- including front-facing camera, search, mentions and hashtags, and the ability to share to Facebook -- as well as bug fixes and performance improvements," Haider added. "Of course, this is only the beginning -- we have exciting plans for features that could exist only on Android."
This article, Android finally gets Twitter's video app, Vine, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
