This week’s readings are mostly viewings. To start, though, let’s have a moment of silence for Vine. The six-second-video-sharing app is owned by Twitter, which in October announced plans to shut it down. In a nutshell, Vine could be used to create and share a six-second clip of anything … just how useful can that be?
- It’s been used in journalism, to the delight of some and the annoyance of others.
- PBS’ MediaShift gives a great rundown of its strengths and weaknesses (as well as some Vining tools).
- Possibly the best example of Vine at work is Six-Second Science Fair.
There are several possible reasons. For one, Twitter has been scaling back in the hopes of turning a profit. For another, livestreaming apps have horned in on its territory. Periscope (also owned by Twitter) is popular, defeated competition like Meerkat, and Facebook Live is perhaps even more popular; one mark in Facebook Live’s favor is the use of the social networking giant’s ability to note popularity of specific points in a stream through viewer likes and reactions. This is our current social media world: Ideas live, they die, they live again (but under new management).
So how do you livestream? The Providence Journal has some suggestions, as does HuffPost. Is livestreaming something you’d try? How can we apply this to the practice of journalism, and what are its problems?
Post your responses in a comment to this post by 11:59 p.m., Sunday, November 6.
aaaaaargh
Interactive Journalism 
I believe Vine was a great start to intergrading video into social media. Before Vine, large platforms like Instagram and Twitter didn’t allow users to post videos. I think the younger generation enjoyed Vine because it was almost like a challenge to see how much you could fit into 6 seconds. Once Instagram started allowing people to post videos for an even longer period of time, Vine slowly started to fade out. I think it’s amazing to see how one app can create so many ideas for a possible new and improved app.
I personally have never live streamed but I see my friend’s moms doing it all the time. For example, they will livestream their younger daughters softball game, or gymnastic meet for those who may have not been able to make it, or for those who might just be interested. I think the great thing with livestream is that you can click out and click back in whenever you feel like it. If I had something interesting to livestream that I thought others would be interested in, I would for sure give it a try. I think livestreaming would work perfectly on a food blog, where you could make a recipe with them without having to constantly pause the video or TV. Problems with livestream may include connection errors. It’s also very easy for someone to miss a livestream and only make it to the video half way through.
Alexa Ciattarelli
R&R13
I have always found great humor in Vine. While I never had an account, I always watched the short videos on Twitter and other social media sites. But I never realized until I looked at the “Vine Journalism Awards showcases the best examples of 6-second news” link, how beneficial Vine can be in the field of journalism. It is interesting to me. You get a quick 6-second clip of what is happening, and automatically you want to learn more. With that being said, Vine is a great way to capture people’s attention.
With that being said, I can see how the decrease in Vine has gone downhill. Snapchat seems to be becoming more and more popular with new features, filters, and more. Kids are starting to get cellular devices at younger and younger ages. And nothing is more appealing to them than silly pictures to their friends!
Back to Vine, I have never used the application to live stream. But after reading the linked sites and watching the videos, I see how Vine can be beneficial. Specifically, for my Group Blog Concussion story, I could have included a Vine on the impact some players experience on the field. While this may be interesting and give the readers eyes a break from reading, my concern is that Vine’s would serve as a distraction, and take them away from reading the rest of the post.
Overall, I think Vine was a good concept and it is unfortunate that it is being shut down. But I am sure that some new application will be on the rise before we know it.
Personally I never used Vine. I never saw the need for it when either my friends would show me the funniest stuff that came across their vines, or the funniest vines always seemed to end up on Twitter. So, I never downloaded it. I get why it was a thing, though, and it can be helpful for journalists if used the right way.
Vine can be used to compress long events into short bursts, or show quick-burst events in real time, like some of the examples shown in Vine Journalism Awards article. The quick-burst events can be something like sports highlights, which if used can spice up an article to show a big play without ads or other annoying features that you normally encounter with sports highlights.
Something I have used is Facebook Live. Some of us at U-92 use it when we’re doing something different or something that we want people to be able to see in real time. We have Facebook Live’d parts of podcasts, as well as an eating contest that I was play-by-play for. (Watch here) I think we can apply live streaming to journalism by allowing it to be a way to interact with readers/followers in real team to make us as journalists come off as more personable and more relatable people.
Live stream can be done a numerous amount of ways. I know for one periscope has been used by music artists to give fans a look at live performances as well as private studio sessions for a more behind the scenes look into their music. I believe that the first link posted about the 6 best Journalistic vines was awesome. They all told a story in just six quick seconds of a video clip.
As the Huffington post said live streaming can be integrated into three of the major social media tools. This is important because you can give the viewers a first hand experience that allows them to feel as though they are right there with you.
Yes I would use live streaming because I feel as though it gives a more real experience. As Briggs says in the chapter thousands of middle school and high school students are being taught how to shoot and edit video. The future is in social media and live streaming because that is the best way to get the best and most accurate information. If everything is done live, and in the moment there is no room for editing and faking a story.
I personally thought that Vine had a great run, and I was somewhat surprised to see that Twitter no longer found it to be viable. A lot of people who used Vine as a platform were able to become famous within the entertainment industry and also able to make a great deal of money in the process. When Instagram allowed users to post videos, I think that this hurt Vine in a way, but by then many of Vine’s power users had fully adapted to the six seconds or less format in order to make compelling and entertaining content.
I don’t believe that Vine had the greatest journalistic appeal or application of any app that I’ve ever seen, but I also saw how it could be useful. Many sports blogs and websites were able to show moments that had just happened using Vine. For example, if a highlight play occurred during an NBA game, a site like Bleacher Report would have the Vine of the play up on their Twitter feed almost instantaneously.
I think live streaming can be used by journalists better than Vine can, due to the fact that one can provide viewers with more content. I know that many news organizations livestream police chases instead of showing them on TV so that they can show the entire chase without it being interrupted by ads. This is one of the many practical journalistic uses of Vine, and one that helps news stations cover simultaneous events without losing vital ad revenue. Livestreaming also adds to the authenticity of a report because putting content out in its raw and unedited form allows for viewers to see an unadulterated view of the story.
I used to have a vine account but I never posted anything to it. I appreciated vine as more of a humor platform as opposed to a platform for journalism. I enjoy it as a scene-setting tool in journalism but I don’t really believe that any story can be properly told in six seconds.
Personally I have used Periscope to livestream. Some of my most popular livestreams were actually just sitting around on campus watching other students move about their days. I have also used Periscope to watch other’s livestreams specifically, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lin used to Periscope from backstage as a way to not go to the stage door. I have shied away from using Facebook Live because it alerts all of the people I am friends with to the fact that I’m broadcasting. The best part of Periscope to me is the fact that it is a separate entity from the rest of my online life.
Periscope is a great tool in journalism for press conferences and the like. I laid in bed the day after the shootings of police officers in Dallas and got the same facts from the police as the journalists in the room. They allow you to offer a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work that we do all the time. To us sitting in endless press conferences is boring but to our readers, they could be the most interesting thing in the world. With the aversion to “the media” that people currently have I believe that pulling back the curtains will be a good skill for us to have.
I never used the vine app, had an account, or made a vine myself. However, I did enjoy watching them. I always found the short little video clips humorous and entertaining.
I never really understood the purpose of vine. After watching the videos in the Vine Journalism Award Showcase, I saw videos that could be created with other video editing software. While the videos were interesting and worthy of their awards, vine isn’t the only way to create them. So then what was the purpose of vine?
I think that vine served it’s purpose and now it’s time to burry it. Vine started the video revelation into social media. Before vine, other social media platforms didn’t allow videos to be uploaded. Now, as a result of vine, you can upload videos to both Twitter and Instagram, and Facebook has come up with their “live” feature.
So vine did serve a great purpose in our social media world. Whether it was entertaining individuals in their spare time or opening the door for other social media platforms to expand their abilities.
I personally never used Vine, but I think it’s really a challenge to communicate a thought through a video that only lasts for 6 seconds. You can not go back and edit either.
I guess you could use Periscope and Facebook Live to live stream.
I used Facebook Live to livestream a concert for all my Facebook friends. It was cool how they could immediately engage by commenting and liking the stream. I think something like Facebook Live and Periscope would be useful for Journalism, as both of these tools are very interactive, you can see the feedback from the viewers right away (if the comments are enabled).
So what’s really cool is I started to type a comment and nearly finished it, and my computer was like or nah and sent me to another page so here I am again.
Long story short, I never used Vine really, watched a few but really a waste of a platform.
Things like Instagram and Snapchat have really made something line Vine obsolete.
I think abuse things like live streaming, they go live baking a cake or singing karaoke, like seriously no one cares. I do use Facebook live I watch Donald Trump on there all the time, and Fox news uses it quite a bit too. Commenting in real time is also useful cause it’s what people are thinking right at that moment. Really, social media shouldn’t be the source of news, you should either be linking it to another site, or something because Tweeting a 140 character news report kinda devalues the use of print journalism, in my opinion- however I am a wordy person.
I can understand why Vine was not all that successful. It was more of a fad and got lost in all the new upgrades like live-streaming apps. I have not used live streaming, but I am now considering it. I can see it being useful as a supplement in sportswriting. I think live streaming a press conference or a pre-game shoot around could be entertaining. I feel like if you are in a place that most others can’t get to, Periscoping or Facebook Live could give people that insider perspective. These apps make good companions to written stories or blogs because it adds extra value to your story. Some problems can be building an audience early on and posting boring events not a lot of people care about. Experimenting is really the only way to tell what will work for you.
Honestly, I feel as though Vine could continue to be a relevant social media app for at least a few more years. They might be jumping the gun a bit by ending the app just because Twitter has become more popular. One of the main shared sources on Twitter are popular Vines that people have found from their app. Without the app, people would have nothing (in a sense) to share. Personally, any videos that I see retweeted on Twitter that are over 30 seconds long, I tend to skip over. No matter how viral it might be. The point of apps like Twitter, Vine, Snapchat and Facebook is to provide their viewers with instant gratification. See something, like something, move on. Vine was the original producer of this new short media content. It opened the door for the copy cats, that while they may be more successful then Vine now, they too were once thought to be irrelevant (calling out Instagram videos).
Livestreaming is the next step in social media. It is amazing. Facebook’s new livestream feature has been so useful in connecting so many people all across the world. Last week I watched a live stream video of a man climbing the tallest light tower (1,999 ft) to change a light bulb. The video was very uneventful, but it was extremely interesting at the same time, because I was in contact with, what felt like, the entire world, from the comfort of my couch. Very few apps are able to do that. I feel like livestreaming will soon become a social media staple. People are already starting to drift away from the TV culture (they’ve been doing so for years) and mainly focusing on their phones and computers. And with apps like Facebook capitalizing on their new feature by livestreaming popular events like, the Presidential Debates, makes watching TV even more unnecessary. The fact that anyone with this app can tune into something occurring at this very moment is truly incredible.
I was pretty happy when vine lost relevance and went on to die, mostly because I found it irrittating in personal social media. It was, however proof of Brigg’s point in the text about video being easy for everyone to produce and consume in today’s world. Video has been gaining momentum in different forms since television news came to be, and now with social media the goal is convenience. People want a convenient, content packed piece that will do all the consuming for them, myself included. I think Instagram video format has been particularly successful in regard to keeping video content short, sweet and to the point.
Live streaming for me would possibly work for my group blog right now because of being at local music spots, concerts etc. I would take the tip from Providnce about letting people know ahead of time, both in person and in other social media outlets in order to create a following for the stream. Live streaming in journalism is a great tool because it puts you night in the action. We’ve all gotten that rush seeing the LIVE memo in the corner of our TV during a major news event, feeling like we are getting the news first. On the other side, going live while reporting translates to credibility, a stronger audience and possibly more revenue. The issues are of course technical problems ( but those are becoming few and far between with constantly advancing technology and social media.