Photovine, Google’s answer to the mobile photo-sharing craze, went live in the iTunes App Store today.
The app, which is only available on iOS to start, puts a somewhat unique spin on social photo publishing by grouping images into common themes, or “vines.” Vine topics can be straight-forward, such as the currently popular “Cutest Dog” vine, or it can leave a little more room for creativity, like “Things I Love About Summer” or “What’s Going On Here?”
Photovine foregoes the artistic, vintage-style filters of popular photo apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic and instead focuses on this thematic grouping of photos. Think of the role photo-tagging plays on a service like Instagram, but pull that feature foward and make it central to the way the app works and you have the concept of “vines.”
You can start by browsing vines and finding ones you want to contribute to or by simply snapping a photo from within the app and then searching for a vine by name before you post it. Once published, your photo will be displayed publicly both within that vine and from your profile.
The app’s interface is rather nicely designed, even if it does bear a striking resemblance to the UI of Piictu, another photo-sharing app.
If the design doesn’t remind you of Google’s usual aesthetic, that’s because the app came from the team at Slide, a social startup they acquired last year.
