Vine arrives: 6s video sharing for Twitter and Facebook

Twitter has launched Vine, a video sharing service that echoes the brevity of the 140-character limit by only allowing users to share up to six seconds of looping footage. Vine, launching initially on iPhone and iPod touch, is a free download, and is the result of an acquisition by Twitter of the Vine team. Basically, think adding movement and audio to your usual tweet brevity, for those times when actions speak louder than words.

“Although we’ve joined Twitter, you don’t need a Twitter account to use Vine (but signing up is a little quicker if you do!)” the team responsible for Vine said today. If you’ve already logged into your iOS device with your Twitter account, you can register – with the same username – with just a couple of taps. Vine asks for a cellphone number, but it’s not mandatory.

Clips support both video and audio, and automatically loop. It’s also possible to share them not only on Twitter but on Facebook, too. Recordings don’t have to be all of one scene, either; Vine only captures video when your finger is held on the preview screen, so you can quickly join a few different scenes together for a mini-movie.

You can download Vine from the App Store here [iTunes link], and Twitter says it’s currently hard at work readying versions for other platforms. No word on when that might result in an Android app or software for other phones, however.