"27 Dancers That Are Completely Mesmerizing."
There are plenty of websites where you might see a headline like that, but you probably wouldn't expect Vine to be one of them.
See also: Watch the Best Videos From Vine's First Year
Vine, the six-second video sharing service from Twitter, is experimenting with a new curated page feature, which collect lists of videos that relate to a single theme. Vine has posted a few of these listicle-like pages so far on its website, including 12 Gorgeous Vine Postcards That Will Make You Want to Travel, These Dogs Have Better Style Than Most Humans and, of course, the 27 Mesmerizing Dancers.
The pages are assembled by an editor on Vine's staff, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, who emphasized that this is still very much in the experimental phase. If Vine continues with this effort, it would mark the first true editorially-curated feature on the social network.
27 Dancers That Are Completely Mesmerizing https://t.co/j8LZhoLM9Q pic.twitter.com/O5pHccf263
— Vine (@vineapp) March 6, 2014
Vine has a number of category pages in its app, which collect videos by theme, but these are determined based on information entered by the user. A few Vine Editor's Picks accounts occasionally share videos, too, but these are based on suggestions from the entire Vine team rather than a dedicated editor.
Vine launched a little more than a year ago and has since registered more than 40 million users, though it hasn't released data on how many of those use the service each month.
In the past, I've argued that recording and sharing videos is more daunting, and something that many — if not most — users will refrain from doing on a regular basis. For that reason, it's in Vine's best interest to work to surface more interesting videos for users to boost engagement among users who may not regularly share videos of their own. Lists may be one way to achieve that.
Our source says the purpose of the curated page feature is to give users another way to potentially explore videos on Vine. For now, it's only available on the web, and it's unclear whether it will be rolled out to the app, too. My guess is that if the lists catch on, Vine will likely bring it to the app and perhaps even give certain users the ability to curate lists of their own.
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