About Vine
Getting Started
What is Vine?
Vine makes video fun. You can watch, create, and share short looping videos – anytime, anywhere.
Through these videos, called Vines, people have an entirely new medium to express themselves and their creativity. Vine empowers anyone to share stories with the world and is a space where people can connect, entertain, and be entertained.
- Find, follow, and interact with people close to you
- Simply touch the screen to record a Vine, or import videos from your phone.
- Editing tools help you get your Vine just the way you want it.
- Follow channels to get hand-picked Vines in your home feed.
- Explore trending tags, popular posts, and editor’s picks.
How do I get started?
Vine is currently available for iOS, Android, and Windows phone devices. You can download Vine for iOS in the Apple App Store, and Vine for Android in the Google Play Store. After installing Vine on your device, you can sign up using an email address or sign in with your Twitter account. Once you’ve logged in, you can find people to follow, post your own videos, and more.
To sign up with your Twitter account:
- Open the app and select the option to Sign in with Twitter.
- Enter your Twitter username and password.
- That’s it! Your account has been created.
To sign up with an email address:
- Open the app and select the option to Sign up with Email.
- Enter your name, email address, and password (a phone number is optional).
- Double-check that your desired name, email address and password are correct.
- Click Done.
That’s it! Your account has been created. Once your account has been created, you can, you can find people to follow, post your own Vines, and more.
How do I choose a username?
Choosing a username is easy because Vine does not require a unique username. When you sign up for Vine using either your Twitter account or email address, you can add any name to your account so long as it does not contain any special characters (+ and - are OK). You can change your username any time in your profile settings.
How do I find people I know on Vine?
You can quickly find people you know on Vine through your device’s address book and people you follow on Twitter. You can also search for people on Vine or invite them via text message or email. To get started, tap the person icon.
Can I control who sees the content I post on Vine?
Profiles and posts on Vine are public by default, but you can also make your account private.
Public Accounts:
- Visible to all Vine users within Vine
- Shareable to Twitter and Facebook, and embeddable (by you or by other Vine users). Sharing externally reveals a post’s URL. Anyone with the post URL can view the post.
- Eligible for public feeds (e.g., Popular Now, Editor’s Picks, trending hashtags)
- Any Vine user can comment on or like your posts.
- Anyone can follow you. If you want to prevent certain users from following you, you may block them.
- Can be revined.
Private Accounts:
- Visible only to your followers within Vine
- Only you can choose to share your posts. If you share a post to Twitter or Facebook, or embed it, the post’s URL will be revealed. Anyone with the post URL can view the post.
- Not eligible for public feeds (e.g., Popular Now, Editor’s Picks, trending hashtags)
- Only your followers can comment on or like your posts.
- Users must request to follow you, and you choose whether or not to approve them. (If you switch from public to protected, existing followers will remain. You can block them if you no longer want them following you.)
- Cannot be revined. When you switch to protected, any posts that have been revined will disappear from the feeds of users who revined them.
To protect your posts, navigate to your Profile and then select “Settings” and “Your Content.” On the “Your Content” page, check “Posts are protected.” This setting applies to all of your posts.
Popular Now
What is Popular Now?
Popular Now is a place for outstanding Vine videos to shine. Popular Now doesn’t favor any particular user or genre of content. There are systems in place to ensure even users without a large number of followers have a chance to be featured. Our team monitors Popular Now to ensure the content follows our Rules and Terms of Service.
How do I get on Popular Now?
We have a special formula in place to fill Popular Now with a variety of original content created by the community that appeals to a wide audience. Being featured on Popular Now is not dependent on the amount of likes, comments or revines a post receives.
How do I find new posts or people to follow on Vine?
The Explore section is a great way to find videos from the Vine community. Navigate to the Explore section and you will see see posts that are Popular Now or On the Rise, various Vine Channels, and Trending Tags. From here, you can also search for specific people or hashtags by using the search bar at the top of the screen.
Channels
What are Channels?
Channels, located in the explore screen, are collections of some of the best Vines organized by topic. Use channels to see new Vines and to find great creators to follow. Vines are featured in channels based on a combination of their popularity and editorial curation.
How do I become featured in a channel?
Our Vine editorial team is constantly reviewing Vine videos to find the most original and high quality content on the network. Featured videos and profiles are selected based on a number of factors, but generally it’s content that we think our users would enjoy viewing. If you want to be featured, we encourage you to keep creating original content and tag your Vine in a channel!
Loops
What are loops?
Vine videos play over and over again. Each time a Vine video plays through once, that is called a loop. In addition to views from within the Vine app, loop totals include views from Tweets as well as views from embedded Vines. You can view loop counts in our iOS and Android apps, as well as on vine.co.
What is the fire icon?
If a Vine has a flame icon, that means it is “on fire”, or being looped at a high rate. Timing is not a factor – these posts may have been created recently or it could be an older Vine that has resurfaced and is being watched a lot.
Do loop counts impact Popular Now?
No, loop counts do not impact Popular Now.
What does the “+” next to a loop count mean?
We started tracking loops on April 3, 2014. For Vines created on or before this date, the loop count only captures loops since that date. So, those Vines have a “+” next to the loop count, indicating that the actual loop count may be higher.
Why is my loop count fluctuating?
We strive to show accurate loop counts, and we have systems in place to help us do this – for example, by mediating potential loop count abuse and removing spam. As a result, it might be that loop counts fluctuate from time to time.
Will my profile loop count change If I delete a Vine video?
No, the loop count on your profile is an aggregate of all your Vine videos’ loop counts. Deleting a Vine video does not change the loop count on your profile.
Do you prevent the loop count metric from being unfairly gamed?
Yes. We have systems in place to ensure the integrity of loop counts and prevent the number from being boosted with spammy tactics. For example, loops are only counted if a Vine is looping while it’s visible in a browser window or on a mobile screen.
Vine Messages
What are Vine Messages?
A Vine message (VM) is a private video (up to 6 seconds long) or text conversation between two users. To access VMs, tap the speech bubble icon in the top right corner of your screen.
How do I send a VM?
- Tap the speech bubble icon .
- Capture your VM by tapping the camera icon located on the bottom bar.
- When you are finished, tap on the right facing arrow located at the top right of the screen.
- Preview your Vine and add text if you’d like. Adding text is optional.
- Tap Next.
- Select who you want to receive your VM.
What’s the difference between my “Friends” Inbox and my “Other” Inbox?
There are two tabs in your VM inbox, Friends and Other. The Friends tab contains VMs from accounts that match any of the below or a combination of the following:
- You follow this account on Vine
- You follow the Twitter account associated with this Vine account (requires that both you and the sender have Twitter accounts associated)
- You have this person’s phone number in your address book (requires that you have your address book saved with Vine and that the sender’s phone number has been verified).
Other contains VMs from users outside of your network and do not meet any of the above criteria. You can move someone from your Other inbox to Friends by following them on Vine.
Why am I being asked to verify my phone number?
Having a verified phone number ensures that when someone tries to send a VM to your phone number we will be able to route the VM correctly to your Vine account. Having a verified phone number also helps us deliver VMs you send to the Friends inbox of your friends. You are also be required to have a verified phone number to send a message to someone who doesn’t follow you.
How do I stop receiving VMs from someone?
If you no longer wish to receive VMs from a specific account you can block or ignore that account.
Blocking an account will prevent the user from following you and viewing your profile, but they will still be able to view and comment on your videos that appear in popular results for search tags. To block an account:
- Navigate to the account’s profile by tapping on the three dots icon [•••] located at the top of the VM thread.
- Tap the three dots icon [•••] at the right of the top menu bar
- Select Block this person.
Ignoring a user’s VMs means that future VMs from that account will not appear in your messages. Ignoring a user’s VMs will not block the account. To ignore a user’s VMs:
- Tap the three dots icon [•••] located at the top right of the screen.
- Tap Ignore.
- Confirm you would like to ignore VMs from this account.
- Note: If you send a VM to an account you’ve ignored, then the ignore will be undone.
Can I unsend a VM that I already sent?
Once you have sent a VM, you cannot unsend it.
What do I do if I get a spam VM?
If you believe you received a spam VM you can delete the message from your inbox by tapping on the post and holding down until Delete appears. Tap delete and confirm. You can also ignore VMs from that account, which will prevent further messages from that account appearing in your inbox in the future. You can find instructions on how to ignore VMs above.
You can also report a user for spam by navigating to the user’s profile and tapping the three dots icon [•••] at the top right. From there you can tap Report as spam.
How many recipients can I send a single VM to?
You can send a VM to up to 200 people.
Where is my Vine ID?
If you can still log in to your Vine account, you can find your Vine ID by going to your profile settings and select either “Invite via text” or “Invite via email”. There you will see your Vine account ID number. If you no longer have access to your account, but can see the account in Vine search, press the “more” icon (three dots) on the top right of the profile. After that, tap on “Share this profile”; from there you will see your Vine account ID number.
What is TV mode?
TV mode allows you to utilize your entire monitor for viewing Vines. TV mode will automatically play the next Vine video after one ends. You can access TV mode by clicking on the television icon. Note: TV mode is only available on web.
What is Vine Kids?
Vine Kids gives children a fun way to watch Vines. Through adorable animated characters, kids can watch curated videos that are appropriate for a young audience. You can find Vine Kids in the Apple Store.