Video blogging has gained a lot of traction in recent years. One app that’s transformed video blogging is Vine. A Vine – a video created in the Vine app – is a short, usually funny clip, and this format has become increasingly popular especially among millennials. The word vine has even become a neologism that refers to a not very lengthy video that people make and edit.
Creating a Vine
To create a Vine, users just film a video and then edit the clip to add music, sounds, and visual effects. They can then quickly share these Vines on social networks. Alongside Instagram pictures, Vines help users remember amusing, magical, and memorable moments.
There are a number of applications that can be used to edit videos on mobile devices. Alternatively, videos can be uploaded to a computer for editing. Let’s take a brief look at the best applications for making Vines that have come out so far.
The official Vine app
The most popular app and social network for Vines is the official Vine app, which was launched in 2012. Soon thereafter, Vine was bought by Twitter, and in 2013 it became the most downloaded free app in the iOS App Store. Vine allows users to shoot six-second videos, speed them up, include photos, make a few basic edits, and then share their creations with friends.
But can this application grow to become as popular as Instagram? Vine does lack some features. For example, it doesn’t let users trim the beginning or end of their videos and it doesn’t have too many editing tools or fancy filters.
Who uses Vine-like apps?
Vine-like apps are associated with fun, excitement, and entertainment. These apps attract creative, energetic, and socially active people. If you want to build a video sharing app, you need to narrow your audience. Addressing too wide of an audience can be confusing and will lead to nothing but frustration, especially when deciding which features to include. The best way to target your app is to either pick a theme that touches people similarly across cultures.
Try to think of themes like animals, art, comedy, music, dance, weird, and so on. If you’re going to develop an app for a narrow audience – let’s say for one country – you’ll need to study that country’s dominant culture in depth. Research what things your target audience is most interested in and see how a video sharing app can contribute to those areas of their lives. If you look at the world through the lens of How can this be captured in a video? you’re sure to find the right app idea. After defining your niche and your audience, you can choose the right functionality for your software.
Consider developing an app for countries such as India, Indonesia, or China. With improving infrastructure and massive smartphone adoption, these countries have become viable targets for internet companies.
Video apps and their success
Kwai app
Kwai, a picture and video sharing app, is considered the most successful app in China. It now also has an English-language version for the international market. At the beginning, Kwai may not have intentionally targeted lower-income cities. However, its product and operation strategies have been centered around one goal: to serve users well.
Creating content that’s real. Kwai is a light, casual platform where everyone can express themselves and share videos of their lives.
We try not to bother users. We don’t want users to sense our existence. We want them to believe that the content on our platform is real and is not schemed up deliberately. This way, they’re more likely to want to share their own lives and interact.
— Su Hua, CEO of Kwai
Simple and dedicated. Kwai is a clean and simple app. There are only three channels on the homepage: Follow, Explore, and Nearby. It also has a navigation drawer and a little camera icon that lets users start recording or uploading videos. Kwai encourages users to focus on creating original content. The app also hides its private messaging function to encourage users to share and record rather than spend time chatting.
An intelligent algorithm. Kwai claims there’s no human team handling the platform’s content recommendation system. The algorithm makes all personalized recommendations. This algorithm is designed to understand video content, user characteristics, and user behaviours as well as browsing and interaction histories. Based on all of this data, Kwai builds models to match content with users. The more users the app gets, the more data it gets and the more precise its recommendations become. The company is focused on optimizing its intelligent matching.
Through this algorithm recommendation mechanism, every user and video has a chance to be exposed in the Explore feed, even if a user has only one follower. The more likes a video receives, the greater the chance the video will be chosen. Kwai’s algorithm recommends videos by analyzing what users have clicked, watched, or liked, populating a user’s Explore channel according to their previous preferences.
Creating a safe environment. Kwai hasn’t offered live streaming for all users yet, as they find it’s not a good way to record and share daily life. Kwai has implemented live streaming as an auxiliary function, but they’ve offered it to only around 10% of their users. Another rule that demonstrates the company’s restrained approach is it that users can follow 20 people within 24 hours.
Kwai addresses the needs of small and medium-sized cities and rural areas of China. But it’s not only Kwai that’s focusing on this market. Many other companies are increasingly valuing the Asian markets and are benefiting from their growth. These are markets in which adoption of online services is growing alongside the smartphone adoption.
Facebook Creator App
Facebook launched the Facebook Creator app to help users make videos more personal and interactive. The app is available to all Facebook users as well as to pages for individuals (but not for organizations). It offers a Live Creative Kit for creating intros and outros to podcasts and a unified inbox of Facebook and Instagram comments plus Messenger chats, cross-posting to Twitter, and expansive analytics. The app has tools for streaming videos, updating Stories, and messaging other users.
This app gives social media stars a powerful tool to grow communities around their content. It also helps Facebook establish a connection with creators and achieve its mission to make the Creator app the focal point for users.
Facebook Creator allows average users and stars not only to shoot videos but also to grow as creators, capture and share videos, interact with fans, and access the content that interests them most.
Apart from the apps listed above, there are also single-platform applications that run on either iOS or Android but not on both. It’s harder to share content with friends when an app is limited to one platform, however. For this reason, single-platform apps tend to have fewer users.
Monetization
Without a doubt, good video sharing app ideas can be monetized. But first, you need to win fans by developing an MVP for the platform you’ve chosen. As soon as you find your fans, you can conduct a survey to find out what additional features they’d like and are ready to pay for.
Another way to monetize your video sharing app is to offer it as a promotional tool, which is how Vine was used when Twitter bought it out to promote their service. You could alternatively develop a strong code base for your app and sell it to a third party. You can also think through the business logic to single out a package of professional editing tools (reverse play, trim by duration, slow/fast motion editor, duplicate, mute, rotate, fine tuning, etc.). You can offer these as paid features since video makers (musicians or business people, for instance) might use your app to create clips or ads for marketing purposes. Your motto should be “If you want to charge your users, put them in charge.”
Webinars have also gained popularity, so developing a webinar platform could also be a strategic move. There are tons of like-minded professionals and amateurs who want to learn new things, yet it’s expensive to rent halls or fly to a city for a conference. A digital webinar platform can offer a much cheaper way to learn. It should let users save money while giving you the chance to make money.
Another mark to consider is eLearning, in which you can use video streaming to enhance students’ experiences. A digital platform can unite teachers and students remotely in virtual classrooms. People seek valuable education and knowledge and are willing to pay to get it conveniently and effectively without needing to travel.
Following the motto of putting users in charge, you might let them tip your service for the opportunity to create videos. You simply need to include tipping within your app. Tipping lets users make their own choice to pay and doesn’t pressure them. Plus, people might even be willing to tip more if they videos turn out really well.
Features to include
Users should be able to shoot videos and upload existing ones, adjust the speed, and do some other basic editing. The ability to share videos with friends across social networks is another key feature. You might also need some additional features such as private messaging, user tagging, notifications (when users are tagged in posts, for instance), hashtag support, or hashtag search.
Also, consider adding the features listed below:
Hidden recording button. A hidden button controls recordings without showing anything on the screen so users can focus on the video alone without being distracted by recording controls.
Front camera overlay. Users can record their faces and emotions in a small overlay window, which can be dragged to any position on the screen and customized to any size.
Countdown timer. A timer is useful when users need to prepare before the actual recording.
Drawing on the screen. This feature can be used for tutorial videos to emphasize things, draw symbols, or mark things in any color.
Trimming and cropping videos. Podcasts can be long and include minor imperfections. Trimming and cropping allows users to shorten them and remove the parts they don’t like to make their videos even more impressive.
Groups. Users may want to share their videos with multiple people at once. Groups let users interact on a more personal level.
How much does it cost to build a Vine-like app?
In total, developing an application similar to Vine would take somewhere between 60 to 90 days. Of course, the actual workload will vary depending on what you want to add. When calculating the cost of development, we estimate the number of hours needed for each feature, then multiply that by our hourly rate and add the result to the total cost.
Currently, there’s no single application that offers all the editing features users need to create snappy, stylish Vines of the length they desire. Users need to find a combination of apps to get just the look they want.
This means that now is the time to create an app of your own and take the market by storm! Users are looking for one app that has a user-friendly UI and UX plus functionality that allows them to edit videos, apply filters, use stickers, add music or sound effects, and easily share their creations with others. An app that includes all these features could be the perfect solution for the millennial market.
If you decide that you want to break into this growing market and go big with your own video making app, contact as with your request and we’ll help you deliver a meaningful digital solution for your target audience!
