The magic of experimenting with new technology and API outputs, as seen with Vinepeek.
There's something magical about the first few moments of a new medium, as people experiment and try to figure out what it's all about. It's a period of uncertainty as a small group of people fumble with new technology and it's fun to watch. Go back and read early Tweets or look at early Instagram photos and you get the equivalent of tapping the mic to see if it's on.
I say this because I stumbled onto
Vinepeek this morning, which shows a continuous stream of new Vines from Twitter. (For the uninitiated
Vine is a new product Twitter announced that lets people make 6-second looping videos.) Watching Vinepeek, I got to thinking that there was something really fascinating with combining a new technology people are getting acquainted to with an API that people can make experimental outputs of. It's like letting people play with the input and the output at the same time, and in the case of Vinepeek you get a very odd thing that feels like a little TV network that peeks into people's lives.
I'm sure it won't be interesting in a few days, but there's a real magic to combining experimentation on creation and distribution at the exact same time.