Vine just announced that it's getting in on private messaging. Users can now send looping six-second video messages to multiple contacts — whether or not those people are also on Vine. It's delightful news for anyone who wants or needs to send looping six-second videos of their junk to a private audience. Or, you know, parents who may not want to share videos of their kids publicly.
It's a little different than the way private messages work on either Instagram or Twitter in that (unlike Twitter) you can send messages to multiple recipients but (unlike Instagram) those recipients can't all see who was copied. It's almost like sending something via BCC in email. And, unlike Snapchats, the messages do not appear to expire after a set time.
One of the more interesting aspects of this, however, is that you can send videos to people via either SMS or email if they aren't on Vine. If you let the app suck up your address book, it will give you the option to send messages to people who don't already have the photo-sharing app installed. To send a message, you go to Messages in the navigation menu, record your private six-second message, and select who you want to "VM."
Your inbox is divided into Friends and Other categories, segregating messages from people you know from those outside your network (read: spam). If you don't want Vine messages from people you don't know, you can switch off the Other inbox entirely in the app's Settings. Granted, that won't keep your friends from spamming your inbox if they wanted.
Along with this update, Vine also is giving users the ability to customize the color of their profiles from the usual jungle green.
You can grab this update in the latest versions of the Vine iOS and Android apps, which are available for download today.
