Twitter users orphaned by Vine. Here are some good alternatives

Twitter closes Vine for economic reasons, but some users miss it. The tools to manage short videos, however, are not lacking

Vine was a very nice idea that unfortunately did not bring in the coffers of Twitter sufficient earnings. So the platform - purchased by the social network in 2012 - to make short videos of only 6 seconds to add to posts, was short-lived (like its movies).

It is useless, months later, to wonder if the drastic strategy of Twitter to kill Vine has brought the economic savings hoped for, the only thing that is certain is that it has unfortunately left many users without a function that they considered useful. There are those who in the meantime have already found an alternative, but those who were still looking for a solution can try one of the applications that we propose in this selection. It won't resurrect Vine, but at least it will allow - in a more or less similar way - not having to give up the creation and publication of these video "pills" - of various kinds - that have inspired similar functions in competitors such as Snapchat and Instagram.

Streamable (web)

Free online service to create and share videos. You don't need to register, but if you want to keep track of everything you've uploaded, you'll need to create an account. Uploading a video is very simple: press the Upload Video button, or use one of the other tools provided to make the upload. Streamable goes into action, uploads, encodes the video, hosts it and steams it to all computers and mobile devices. All uploaded videos have a unique link that can be published anywhere. The embedding feature offers additional options. The maximum size of a video cannot exceed 10GB and the duration of more than 10 minutes. You can also upload video by copying its URL.

Dubsmash (Android, iOS)

(Taken from YouTube)

No online service, just applications to be used on smartphones (iOS and Android) that allow you to match a video - even taken from famous movies - with the audio of famous songs, animal verses, recited phrases and other sounds. The database to package these movies is very rich and offers a great range of elements to use to make something truly unique. You can find it for free on the App Store and Google Play.

Periscope (Web, Android, iOS)

Periscope  is another application from the Twitter stable for broadcasting a live shot made with your smartphone or via the online platform. It could, in some ways, be considered the natural successor to the defunct Vine with the difference that here it is live streaming, and not the making and sharing of short 6-minute videos that can be edited before sending them out to one's Twitter followers. Periscope is available as a web service, but also as a downloadable application from the App Store and Google Play Store. Once downloaded, and installed, it must be associated with your Twitter account in order to work. At this point you can enable live streaming via your smartphone's camera - or from the online service - and broadcast it to all your followers who can watch the live stream in real time or the recording later.

Coub (Web, Android, iOS)

It is a video streaming service for clips of up to 10 seconds - maximum 200MB - from which you select an excerpt that is then broadcast repeatedly, in a loop. Operation does not differ from other similar tools, although here, a bit like YouTube, they are organized into topics. Registration to the service is required using the credentials of one of your social profiles - Facebook, Google, Twitter and VK - or to "sign up" using your email address. Coub allows you to import videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, DailyMotion, CollegeHumor, FunnyOrDie, LiveLeak, Wimp, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and CarambaTV - by indicating the specific URL - but also upload videos of your own production. Coub supports a wide variety of video formats - .mp4, .flv, .mov, .mkv, .mpeg, .mpg, .webm, .mpe, .avi, .3gp, .asf, .wmv, .m4v, .ogg - including GIF animations, and .mp3, .ogg and .m4a audio files. It allows the use of tags and sharing is done by posting the url of the video. You can select the size, even customized, and share it on the main social networks also through the embedding code. Coub is available for free as a web service, but also as an application for iOS and Android.

Gfycat (Web, Android, iOS)

GIFs are experiencing a "second youth" and this is demonstrated by the support for these animations by several services and applications for smartphones. Gfycat is one of them that has made GIFs - Graphics Interchange Format - its workhorse. The service is available online, it doesn't help you create gifs from scratch but transforms the ones you have, or short videos of up to 15 seconds into high quality animated gifs. To give you an example, while a normal gif normally takes 80 seconds to load, gfycats take just 21 seconds to display, which is about 1/4 of the time it usually takes. You can choose a gif you like from the database of the site and possibly customize it by adding text or special effects, cut unnecessary parts and also correct the size of the frame. Once processed, the file can be published and shared by sending a simple link. The only limitation, it seems, is that gifs do not support audio. Gfycat is available for free as a web service, but also as an app Gfycat Loops: Make, Find GIFs for iOS and Android.