Vine, the mobile video sharing application, has updated its desktop site. With the update, users can now head to vine.co in order to browse through videos and any public profile. Before the change, the network had only let people who were logged-in to search and then watch videos on the desktop site.
Now that search is enabled for any visitor, the site functions similarly to YouTube with the main difference being that all of Vine’s videos are extremely short.
Certain categories of videos that were frequently used in the mobile Vine apps for Android and iOS have also been added to the desktop site. So, people can browse content in Channels, Explore, Trending, and Popular Now.
If you would really like to waste a lot of time–seriously, do not do this–Vine has added a TV feature. When TV is enabled, a constant stream of videos with the same tag will be created with a larger viewing area. As a result, you can pretty much stare at videos all day long.
Up until now, the primary way to watch, share and discover Vine videos has been on your phone. We’ve heard from the Vine community that you sometimes want to explore Vine and view videos on your computer too, – Janessa Det, Vine
Since the app is owned by Twitter and Twitter is currently trying to make its own site easier to use so that more people will sign up, the re-design makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, Facebook and its acquired app, Instagram, are fairly closed to the public.
A lack of advertisements on Vine is one of the best things about it right now and since things are always bound to change, it seems likely that the Twitter and Vine teams are working hard to come up with a way to monetize the application. With Vine TV, for example, there are at least a few ways that ads could be implemented thanks to the new design and features.