If you care about sending quick clips up to six seconds long via Twitter-owned Vine for iPhone, you should pause for a second and take a look at today’s Vine update which brings a few major enhancements. Most notably, Vine 1.3 enhances your privacy by introducing protected posts.
Protecting a post will make it unavailable to the web at large so only the people you approve to follow you can see them (you can also protect your entire account.
This release also brings out a redesigned camera, new channels and trending posts, the ability to re-share someone’s vine (finally!) and other perks. Go past the fold for the full breakdown…
Twitter felt this update was major enough to warrant a blog post.
“This is our biggest, most exciting update yet — and we’ve got even more coming soon,” the post teases.
Your Explore screen now includes a new ‘On the rise’ section which curates new and interesting Viners, helping surface viral and interesting content. To quickly discover what’s making rounds on Vine, check out curated channels, each with its own theme and Popular feed.
There are fifteen new channels to browse and upload your clips to: Comedy, Art & Experimental, Cats, Dogs, Family, Beauty & Fashion, Food, Health & Fitness, Nature, Music, News & Politics, Special FX, Sports, Urban and ‘wier d’ – each with their own theme.
And if want to tell your followers about a funny vine you’ve stumbled upon, revining someone else’s post is now possible with a single click.
The redesigned camera makes it easier to frame your clips by adding grid, focus and ghost tools. The latter lets you see your previous shot as a ghost-like overlay – very handy for stop motion recording, as seen on the screenshot below.
Protected posts will also be available in an Android update later today. It’s worth pointing out that sharing a protected post to Twitter or Facebook will also make it viewable on the web.
As for the other features that have been just added to the iOS edition,they are “coming to Android next week,” Twitter promised.
Fixes included in this update:
• Fixed an issue that caused the camera to focus unnecessarily while recording
• Improved cache control and less disk space usage
• Faster search for hashtags and people you mention frequently
• Crash fixes and other miscellaneous improvements
Vine can be downloaded free from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store for Android devices.