Vine competitor Cinemagram comes to Android after a year on iOS

While Vine has been caught twiddling its thumbs, the original video-looping app, Cinemagram, has released an Android app after a year of being present only on iOS. Cinemagram will allow Android users to make unlimited uploads using its app.

The app allows you to upload four-second videos compared to Vine’s six-second ones. What sets it apart from Vine is the fact that Cinemagram allows you to “Instagramise” your videos. Once you’ve shot your short video and are ready to upload it, you will be presented with a screen that allows you to try out and pick Instagram-like filters for your GIF.

You can also play around with speed and other masking options that help you put the viewers’ focus on one particular part of the video. For example, if you’ve shot a video of a group of your friends, you can use the masking effect to show only one of them in motion and the rest of them will appear completely still. You can share your images with your friends over Facebook, Twitter and even over Tumblr. The service lets you message friends too.

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Instagramise your videos

While the possibilities of what you can do with short, looping GIFs are unlimited, there is a constant war between nascent services that offer this type of service. Cinemagram arrived on the scene much before Vine did, in 2011. Vine was bought over by Twitter only last year and the service kicked off in early 2013.

Vine should not be too perturbed by this development though. The four-month-old app is already going places even if it’s just on the iOS platform. Earlier this week, Vine’s Creative Director and Co-Founder Rus Yusupov announced that the video app had climbed to the number one free app position in the App Store charts for the US. Countries like Canada and Sweden too have Vine as the top app in the social section of the App Store.

While Vine is comfortably cruising at this stage, the service should probably not rest on its laurels. Part of the app’s popularity is due to the “porntroversy” it was entangled in during its early days. As it appeared on the App Store with a bang, pornographers found the platform conducive to hosting explicit videos. After a long tussle between Apple and Twitter, the latter decided to put in stringent measures in place for Vine. As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Buck up, Vine, we would love to see you on Android too.

You can get hold of Cinemagram for Android from the Google Play Store here.