Twitter Launches Vine for Kids

Micro blogging site Twitter, has just launched a new version of their Vine video-sharing app. This time it is aimed squarely at children. The Vine Kids app promises to filter out any inappropriate content. Vine Kids has initially launched for iOS  and it will provide a feed of “hand-selected” six-second videos that loop from Vine’s community. The videos will contain no swearing or other forms of adult content in order to keep kids entertained, yet safe.

To make the app appealing to kids there has been an addition of animated characters to host the app. In a recent blog post announcing the new app, Vine’s Carolyn Penner wrote, “We’ve seen for ourselves – and heard from parents, siblings and others – that kids love Vine…The idea came about during an office conversation in early January. One of my colleagues was talking about how much his two-year-old daughter loves Vine – he said he wished there was a separate app she could use to more easily watch posts that are appropriate for kids.”

The new app was developed by staff during the company’s ‘Hack Week’, where employees are encouraged to work on sideline projects.

Currently, the clips that have been chosen for the app are a little, how shall I say, cat- and dog-centric. There are also some other characters, such as singing eggs and Elmo from Sesame Street. Rather interestingly, some animated aliens and a hedgehog that plays the piano can also be seen on the new app; the kind of things that small kids love.

This new launch comes after a year of growth for the video looping app. Vine’s original app was launched by Twitter back in January 2013 just after buying Vine, the developer start-up of the same name.  

By August 2014, Vine said their videos were watched by more than 100 million people per month via the app and the web. The videos themselves chalked up 347.2bn “loops”  in the last nine months of the previous year.

So with this kind of growth, it appears as though Vine has aimed the new app at the right time, but I guess we will have to wait and see what the kids think of it.

[Image via theverge]

SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/02/twitter-video-app-vine-for-kids