Have you noticed in the past few years that certain words have taken on an entirely new meaning?
Just five years ago, people were only learning what a tweet was. Funny. I always thought it was the sound a bird makes. My mistake.
But, I digress.
Over the past year, another word has gained a new definition. I always thought that a vine was “a plant that has very long stems and that grows along the ground or up and around something (such as a wall or tree).” Thank you, Merriam-Webster.
But, a growing trend has started on the social networking site known as Twitter. You know…where we get tweets from.
It’s called Vine. This isn’t just something you climb anymore. Vine is now known as a video service.
Specifically speaking, Vine is a social media tool that allows a user to create seven seconds worth of video and post it online. Although the service was originally created exclusively for Apple products, such as the iPhone, Vine also became available for Android products in June of this year. So now owners of the iPad and Droid phones can climb…I mean, produce videos for all the world to see.
But, why only seven seconds? People have always posted videos that lasted one to three minutes.
Maybe that’s the key though. In a world of less-is-more, people are creating shorter versions of everything. Take Vine’s parent company, Twitter, for example. That site is famous for only allowing 140 characters per tweet. That, alone, forces the user to shorten what they want to say in order to fit it within the limit.
Let’s not stop there. Hashtags (denoted by “#”) represent topics within tweets that normally would have been expanded upon in the past. They have also, recently, crossed over to Facebook. So the trend is definitely catching on.
Speaking of Facebook, those posts are also becoming shorter. No longer do people write full paragraphs to express a thought. They often use one sentence…if even a full one. Sorry English teachers. Instead, they too, include pictures (now known as pics) and videos to get their point across.
So, in today’s world of shorter tweets, videos that only last seven seconds and grammatically incorrect sentences that are now considered Facebook posts, I’ve realized something.
ICFGTPD