<story><title>Show HN: Vinepeek - watch the world in realtime in 6 second snippets</title><url>http://vinepeek.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>will_brown</author><text>Ah...the results of the race to be the &quot;Instagram of Video&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Vine is no different than any number of recent video sharing apps.  Vine does nothing new but sets new arbitrary time limits on the videos they support.  Just like the others Vine will try to convince you that through focus groups they have found &quot;3 second&quot; videos will revolutionize video sharing and discovery, but this is nothing new.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;Threadlife: Supports 3 second videos
Viddy:  Supports 15 second videos  
Animoto:  Supports 30 second videos
Klip:  Supports 60 second videos&lt;p&gt;now Vine and its 6 second videos.&lt;p&gt;I am left wondering, what problem do all these video sharing apps think they are solving by setting arbitrary video time limits?  Short videos might increase likelihood a user will sit through a whole video, but contrary to what these apps want you to believe they are not improving content quality through these arbitrary time limits.  Further, time limits do not help users discovery quality content, so what problem have any of these apps solved?&lt;p&gt;The company that is dubbed the &quot;Instagram of video&quot; in the media is going to do the same thing Instagram did, improve content sharing and discovery.  Of course, I hope my start up is that company, but even if not I think it is safe to say the company who deserves this title will not get it for setting video time limits as a result of focus groups.&lt;p&gt;Disclosure:  I founded my own video sharing website with the goal to address the current problems with video sharing and discovery.  I have done this by making Google Earth the UI for discovery of video content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dxbydt</author><text>Result of artificially constraining an activity by arbitrary parameters can be wildly creative, not to mention hugely lucrative. Think of something like Bollywood - get rid of serious, credibile drama, and replace with mindless 3 hour melodrama with 5 titillating songs per film, your film finds a guaranteed million plus audience, no matter what garbage you churn out:) Intellectual filmmakers in India who fight this market and mindset with &quot;improving content&quot; are very quickly driven to bankruptcy &amp;#38; become Roger Eberts for the local trade publications :))&lt;p&gt;Programming languages are ultimately an exercise in artificially tying up your arms &amp;#38; asking you to type with your left toe. Try coding a naturally recursive catamorphism in a language that doesn&apos;t support recursion. Try storing a billion emails under a megabyte with clever supercompact data structures. Try coding functionally in imperative C. All of these things can &amp;#38; have been done. Why do people do these things ? So also Vine.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Vinepeek - watch the world in realtime in 6 second snippets</title><url>http://vinepeek.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>will_brown</author><text>Ah...the results of the race to be the &quot;Instagram of Video&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Vine is no different than any number of recent video sharing apps.  Vine does nothing new but sets new arbitrary time limits on the videos they support.  Just like the others Vine will try to convince you that through focus groups they have found &quot;3 second&quot; videos will revolutionize video sharing and discovery, but this is nothing new.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;Threadlife: Supports 3 second videos
Viddy:  Supports 15 second videos  
Animoto:  Supports 30 second videos
Klip:  Supports 60 second videos&lt;p&gt;now Vine and its 6 second videos.&lt;p&gt;I am left wondering, what problem do all these video sharing apps think they are solving by setting arbitrary video time limits?  Short videos might increase likelihood a user will sit through a whole video, but contrary to what these apps want you to believe they are not improving content quality through these arbitrary time limits.  Further, time limits do not help users discovery quality content, so what problem have any of these apps solved?&lt;p&gt;The company that is dubbed the &quot;Instagram of video&quot; in the media is going to do the same thing Instagram did, improve content sharing and discovery.  Of course, I hope my start up is that company, but even if not I think it is safe to say the company who deserves this title will not get it for setting video time limits as a result of focus groups.&lt;p&gt;Disclosure:  I founded my own video sharing website with the goal to address the current problems with video sharing and discovery.  I have done this by making Google Earth the UI for discovery of video content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pdog</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;#62; Vine does nothing new but sets new arbitrary time limits on the videos they support.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imposing arbitrary contraints is very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form, and other creative endeavors[1]. So even if that&apos;s all they do, it could be worthwhile.&lt;p&gt;[1] - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>