vine

Social video startup Viddy lays off a third of its staff

Social video startup Viddy has laid off a dozen employees, or about a third of its work force, as it faces competition from a Twitter app.

The cuts come less than a month after the firing of co-founder and CEO Brett O'Brien, who was rumored to have turned down a buyout offer from Twitter. In a statement, Viddy's board confirmed the staff reductions, which will reportedly focus on marketing and operations:

As the board continues to review Viddy's business, we've identified specific ways to streamline costs which include eliminating some positions. These changes will allow the … Read more

LinkedIn eyes content as connection

Friday's CNET Update endorses your video-watching skills:

Stories from today's tech news roundup:

- LinkedIn eyes future as professional publishing hub

- NBC deems EveryBlock a dead end, turns off local news service

- Twitter enabling searches for tweets older than a week

- Guess what? Vine videos are longer than six seconds

- Zynga's FarmVille coming to a television near you

- Spotify releases a beta Windows Phone 8 app

- Get romantic with Spotify's Playlist Poetry

Watch CNET Update in the video above, and subscribe to the podcast via the links below.

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Guess what? Vine videos are longer than six seconds

Among the many curiosities about Twitter's Vine app has been how the company decided six seconds was the magic number for a clip's length.

Well, guess what? It turns out that the maximum length of a Vine isn't six seconds at all. In fact, they top out at six and a half seconds.

And how do we know? After watching a Vine today that was tweeted by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, I came away with the feeling that it felt longer than advertised. A bit of quick work by CNET videographer Jared Kohler, using iShowU, then proved … Read more

Vine Flow lets you browse Vine videos on Android

If you're an Android user who has been wondering what all the hype over Twitter's Vine app is about, you're in luck. A new Android app called Vine Flow allows Android users to browse Vine videos on their device. But there are some pretty big drawbacks to the app. Currently you can only browse the latest videos uploaded to the service, or search for a specific hash tag. You can't upload a video yourself, log in and view a timeline, or even navigate to a specific Vine feed.

The video above gives you a brief rundown … Read more

Twitter gives Vine an NC-17 rating after porn controversy

After a dustup over pornography showing up on Vine, the Twitter-owned video-sharing app has added an age rating for possible adult content.

The app for iPhone and iPod Touch, which lets anyone create and share six-second clips, quickly became a popular venue for pornography after its release last month. Twitter responded by trying to make it harder for users to find the adult videos, blocking a number of porn-related search terms such as "#porn."

The microblogging site initially added a warning still to the beginning of videos in question that users would have to bypass to see the … Read more

Twitter won't make 'sacrifices' required to be in China: CEO

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that the social-networking giant won't "make the kind of sacrifices" necessary to be allowed to work in China and Iran.

In an interview with the The Wall Street Journal published today, Costolo addressed the question of whether Twitter would like to be available in China and Iran by replying that the company is not willing to filter out the kind of politically sensitive material that government officials in those two countries would require in order to be allowed to function there.

Costolo also said a Twitter IPO is "not necessarily inevitable&… Read more

Watch as Vine becomes the next great news-gathering tool

What if the Arab Spring, or Hurricane Sandy had been Vined?

Much has been made over the years about how Twitter is one of the world's most important new tools for reporting breaking news. But with the launch of Vine, has Twitter now expanded its control over citizen journalism to video?

Until now, most of the conversation about Vine has been around the service's ability to capture life's quirky moments, or as a way to create interesting (and sometimes artistic) stop-motion video. And of course, everyone knows that there's plenty of porn to be found.

Today, … Read more

Tumblr avoids porn label and adds mature rating to iOS app

Tumblr looks to be trying to avoid the porn-war that recently harangued the 500px photo app and Twitter's Vine app.

The microblogging company threw up a 17-and-over age warning for its iOS app for all new users and any people updating their app to the 3.2.4 version, which was released today.

"You must be at least 17 years old to download this app," Tumblr writes in its description of the app in the iTunes App Store, because it contains "Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity."

The app's upgrade says only that it … Read more

How to turn a Vine into an animated GIF

An ambitious developer, Esten Hurtle, has developed a way to quickly turn any Vine video into an animated GIF using a very simple Mac app. The app, VineGifR, is free and available to download by following the download link in the ReadMe section on Esten's Github page. It's a good idea to follow this page for further app updates as development continues. As you'll see below, the current version of the app is very basic.

Originally covered by Mashable, Esten posted the app on Hacker News asking for feedback.

The first time you launch the app on … Read more

Sad plant! Vine experiences widespread service outage

Vine, the loopy video-sharing application from Twitter, experienced a widespread service interruption Tuesday. Sadly, people's pithy, provocative, and pretentious 6-second updates were put on semi-permanent pause.

The Twitter-owned service acknowledged the issues and alerted people via tweet at 10:17 a.m. Pacific today. Twitter declined to provide an explanation for the downtime, but the company did confirm that the service is now back up and running.

Vine, still less than a week old, is to video what Twitter is text, which means the iPhone application and its 6-second machinations are inspiring both awe and ire. See the Vine … Read more