Twitter's video app attracts big brands

Twitter's video app Vine is attracting attention. The Brooklyn Nets recently tweeted the above clip, Warming up, the Brooklyn way.

Despite its novelty, Vine has attracted some big brands, including General Electric and Gap, who pay to have their six-second clips promoted, reports the Financial Times.


"Vine is a natural complement to Twitter - it's creative storytelling driven by constraint," says Linda Boff, executive director of global brand marketing at General Electric.

Vine builds on the online popularity of the GIF, an image file which can show a few frames of animation without the need for video player software. Crucially Vine posts and GIFs work well on mobile, where long video clips often require Adobe's Flash platform, which does not work on Apple's iPhone.