Twitter has just officially announced Vine, a new way to share video directly through tweets. This comes less than one day after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo teased the new service on his Twitter feed. Vine is a separate app that's now available on the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod touch users; Twitter says it'll soon bring the app to more platforms. The app lets you shoot a quick six seconds of video and embed it in your tweets just like you can with photos; the videos loop infinitely, making this almost more of an easy GIF-creation tool than a true video capture app. Twitter purchased Vine back in October before the company managed to launch a product, but it didn't take long to get this app into the hands of users.

So far, tweets with videos work with full audio both in the browser and in the Twitter mobile app (we tried on the iPhone and Android). Even third-party client Twitterific was able to play back the video with no trouble, though it wasn't quite as well-integrated as it is in the main Twitter app. Audio appears to be muted on the desktop by default — a thoughtful inclusion that we think most users will appreciate. If you're interested in giving it a shot, the app is available in the App Store now.

Update: Twitter appears to be experiencing some launch day hiccups with Vine. As such, the company has temporarily disabled the ability to share videos to your timeline and Facebook. You can still watch clips without a problem within the Vine app, and we can't imagine the pause in web sharing will last very long.