Infinite Loops

October 31, 2016 11:38 AM

Vine users can now port all their loops into Giphy -- although the process necessarily removes the audio, which for many vines was integral.

In presumably unrelated news, Giphy just raised an additional $72 million in funding, giving the company a valuation of $600 million.

posted by me3dia (27 comments total)

Perhaps Giphy could use some of that money to simply buy Vine instead.
posted by me3dia at 11:39 AM on October 31, 2016 [15 favorites]

Vine + looping - sound = Vine Lite = ...a GIF. Woo.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:57 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't Giphy and Imgur use webm videos without sound in place of gifs already? Seems like full-on Vine clones would be relatively low overhead on top of long, high-res gif-like support.
posted by MuppetNavy at 11:59 AM on October 31, 2016

Oh Giphy, please make the audio work too!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:06 PM on October 31, 2016

Vine + looping - sound = Vine Lite = ...a GIF. Woo.

Yeah, pretty much. I think the starting point for Vine to begin with was basically just "gifs with sound."
posted by me3dia at 12:07 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fear not, you can port your Vine audio into Soundcloud.
posted by bondcliff at 12:12 PM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm not a Vine user, so correct me if I'm wrong - wouldn't it be just as easy to throw your Vines on YouTube, and keep the sound?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:12 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Greg_Ace: yes, but they won't loop, which for many of them really added to the humor.
posted by foldedfish at 12:17 PM on October 31, 2016

"and saving the video (sound and all) as the source file"

So, it looks like the source videos are saved with audio. Does anyone know if you can share links to source video? Or is just there if you want to make new gifs out of it or something.

Unless they meant they'd facilitate saving the source video to the user's computer. If so, it's worded oddly/ambiguously.
posted by defenestration at 12:17 PM on October 31, 2016

"I'm not a Vine user, so correct me if I'm wrong - wouldn't it be just as easy to throw your Vines on YouTube, and keep the sound?"

Speaking of, this is why I think Vine failed. Youtube loses money but they make some money back through advertisements. How long can an ad preceding a 6 second video be?
posted by I-baLL at 12:17 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Surely a better kludge would be to upload it to Youtube with the video just copied 100x or so to provide the looping? Or Youtube could add an auto-replay button that could be set by the uploader to be on by default, if that was something they cared to do. Ads before the video would ruin it, obviously.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:28 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

At TC Disrupt SF in September, Chung explained that mobile messaging has yet to land on a native advertising format, and that GIFs could fill that role. You can imagine how, in the context of messaging between friends, brands could insert their products into intimate conversations in a format that could feel relatively natural and highly relevant.

counter-argument: fuck you
posted by secret about box at 12:28 PM on October 31, 2016 [23 favorites]

Some vines motherfucker!
posted by wabbittwax at 12:31 PM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

Perhaps Giphy could use some of that money to simply buy Vine instead.

Yes, but then when giphy's money train inevitably runs out, who will buy giphy-owned-vine?
posted by paulcole at 12:39 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

How long can an ad preceding a 6 second video be?

Oh right, those...I never see them, so I forgot about that wrinkle.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:40 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

How long can an ad preceding a 6 second video be?

Why would it precede the video? Why not throughout the video? Surely it can't be long, if it isn't happening already, before the DeepDream neural net code is used for advertising. Instead of product placement, video will be subtly re-synthesised to remind you of certain products and things. But why stop there? Instead of training the net to change the images into something that reminds you of a thing, the nets can just be heavily trained for the outcome "Made me feel more likely to buy Product X". Of course, a specific trained net might not work for all types of people, but they could use your demographic information from social networks and browsing habits to work out which one will work best on you.

The golden age of Sci-Fi dreamed of machines that satisfied our every need, but they're just as likely to be the ones helping to create them.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:59 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Streamable should offer an import option from Vine. They're the Giphy of movie files (ie: audio + video), see this random example. It's popular for sharing sports clips. I use it for League of Legends highlights. And it'd be perfect for Vines.
posted by Nelson at 1:04 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

How long can an ad preceding a 6 second video be?

I think a better model would be that of Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.: sponsored posts from advertisers in your stream. There were plenty of brands using Vine in the early days, but it wasn't monetized and then Snapchat figured out how to charge and we know how this story ends.
posted by me3dia at 1:05 PM on October 31, 2016

why do I think that giphy's kind of a garbage company? There's something in the back of my head that makes me think that.
posted by boo_radley at 1:27 PM on October 31, 2016

I get that GIFs have gotten popular due to some of the constraints imposed by the format...

But, seriously. MP4 is superior in almost every way, and it isn't particularly difficult for site-owners to implement size/audio restrictions.

Giphy, Twitter, and Facebook all use MP4 internally, so... maybe we should all just start using <video> tags in the first place?
posted by schmod at 1:29 PM on October 31, 2016

I thought Giphy uses webm/VP8, which is better than MP4 in the not-patent-encumbered sense.
posted by indubitable at 2:09 PM on October 31, 2016

Greg_Ace: yes, but they won't loop, which for many of them really added to the humor.

Exactly.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 2:45 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

While on the one hand I usually watch random Youtube videos with the sound off for various reasons, so it's not like the silence of a movie-turned-to-GIF bothers me, on the other hand when the GIF version of the movie is larger than the video it was ripped from (like 180 MB GIF file vs a 64 MB source video file), and doesn't even provide the benefit of optional sound, it makes me go
/giphy whyyyyyyyyyy



oh fuck that doesn't work here. Dammit.
posted by ardgedee at 4:01 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Migrating your data to a company with no revenue or monetization model seems shortsighted.
posted by mhoye at 5:41 PM on October 31, 2016

Can Vine buy itself simultaneously while Giphy buys itself? What happened to poor neglected Pornhub? So many choices, so few years, months, days...
posted by DJZouke at 6:05 PM on October 31, 2016

Why doesn't vine just fricking charge a tiny subscription.

Someone has to take the micropayment/long tail/whatever-the-fuck-you-wanna-call-it plunge at some point.
Twitter and its monetisation dysfunction seems like the perfect candidate to go all in.
posted by fullerine at 4:09 AM on November 1, 2016

The issue with charging an admission fee to a social network, which by definition uses the number of other users (some/many of whom you know!) as a major selling point, is that the difference between $0 and $1 may be a larger barrier in terms of lost audience dropoff than perhaps even the difference between $1 and $10.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:23 AM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]