The Vine app now belongs to Twitter. It was originally created by Rus Yusopov and Dom Hofman, two American entrepreneurs and inventors, and the Vine company was founded in June 2012. It was soon joined by engineer Colin Kroll as CTO, and then in October 2012 the company was bought by Twitter.
The Vine app came out in January 2013. It was introduced as a free app for use on iPods and iPhones, though it is hoped that it will soon be possible to use it with other platforms.
With the Vine you can make a short, free video. It is only about 6 seconds long at present, and you have to tap the screen in order to activate it, which gives it a characteristic effect. The videos can immediately be shared, for example on Twitter or Facebook, or embedded elsewhere on the internet. You can learn more about Vine here.