Vine's 4 Growth Missteps

This was originally posted on Quora, Inside the Product, on 1/20.

Like a fish in water, Vine, the internet’s newest shiny mobile app from Twitter, has got me hooked. Clearly I’m not the only one as evidence by the continuous flow of videos on vinepeek, volume of Vine’s shared on Twitter, and its current rank at #23 in the U.S. overall free App Store.

Despite this initial traction, here are a few missteps that may be limiting its growth potential:

1) No Auto-Follow
Users must manually select friends to follow which wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Vine provided a notification when friends joined the service. Communities like Quibb auto-follow users that you also follow on Twitter to create instant social connections for new users and populate its social graph.

2) Adding Friends is Hidden
When you first signup, Vine prompts you to search and follow your friends but after the initial on-boarding process, the “find friends” functionality is buried within the profile screen. This further emphasizes the problems in #1.

3) Anti-Engagement Dynamics
My friend Adam Kazwell pointed out that when you comment on a popular Vine, your activity feed instantly becomes full of noise, notifying you when other strangers also commented, discouraging further engagement… I shouldn’t have commented about that banana:

4) Where Are The Push Notifications?
This one is obvious. Oddly Vine doesn’t use push notifications. No notice when someone likes/comments on my Vine, follows me, or any of the other standard re-engagement mechanics.

These are easy shortcomings to address and they clearly haven’t obstructed its early success. After all, great products are the ultimate driver of growth.

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How else can Vine improve? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter (@rrhoover).