“On January 17 the Vine app will become the Vine Camera. We will notify you through the app before this happens. The Vine Camera will allow you to make 6.5 second looping videos and post them to Twitter, or save them to your camera roll in a logged out state. You will not be able to do any of the other things you can currently do with the Vine app. Once the Vine Camera is live, you will no longer be able to download your Vines from the app. “

Maintaining the looping video function, but then forcing it to be fed through Twitter to be shared is Twitter’s way of catching up with Instagram and Snapchat, right? Snapchat already has exclusive comedy content through their app, including a few series from Comedy Central, leaving a lot of ground to cover for a Vine Camera + Twitter combo.

We’ll just have to wait and see if the hardcore Vine users will stick with this new format or if they’ve already jumped ship to other apps and will keep it that way.