Twitter vs. Facebook Land Grab Continues with Vine Segregation
In October 2012, Twitter purchased Vine, a video sharing service that specializes in six second snippets that fall right in line with Twitter’s forced character limit. Information as to how Twitter would integrate with Vine was kept quiet until yesterday when it was revealed that Vine will remain a standalone app—and not integrate at all.
Currently, Vine is only available for iOS users, but Vine representatives have said “stay tuned for that”—regarding what is assumed to be an announcement of the app’s availability on Android or other platforms.
In further non-integration news, within a matter of hours of the launch of Vine as a Twitter-based app, Facebook shut down API access, preventing users from even being able to determine which of their friends on Facebook were using Vine.
The “cold war,” as many are calling the Twitter vs. Facebook battle, has always existed and last made headlines with Facebook’s one billion dollar purchase of photo sharing service Instagram.
Techi notes that “It’s a growing trend amongst the elite social media websites to spite each other through denials.” Acquiring companies that have a product that will be attractive to their users is an obvious move but restricting their users from comfortably using a rival’s product takes "not sharing” to what some feel is a childish level.
What Facebook and Twitter are more than willing to do, often to their users dismay, is to share their sharing services with ... advertisers. Facebook and Instagram both found themselves in the middle of a PR nightmare over Instagram’s privacy policies late last year, and Vine has already caught on with retailers faster than with individual users.
Perhaps the most interesting point of Twitter’s decision to leave Vine as a standalone, yet owned app, is brought up later in Techi’s article where the debate for whether the need of integration of these powerhouses and their takeovers is really necessary. Referring to the “early days of social media” as “incestuous,” JD Rucker writes:
Now that they can operate and grow independently, they simply don’t need each other as much. Vine is not the beginning and is far from the end. It may, however, spark a development trend of not even trying to work in integration. Why build something into an app that will likely get cut off?
What do you think of Twitter and Facebook’s shared belief of not sharing? We fully believe in sharing and would love for you to provide your opinion in the comments section below—whichever side you’re on!
