As previously reported, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo previewed what an upcoming Twitter video-sharing experience would look like when he tweeted, using Vine, which the company acquired last year.

Today, the company officially launched the offering in the form of a downloadable iOS app. From the company blog:

Today, we’re introducing Vine: a mobile service that lets you capture and share short looping videos. Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (6 seconds or less) inspires creativity. Now that you can easily capture motion and sound, we look forward to seeing what you create.

I understand Twitter’s long-standing philosophy of brevity, but I’m not sure it works as well in video form. Is there really a great deal of demand to share six-second video clips? I’m sure you can point to any number of potential use cases, but I just can’t see this being a huge thing among Twitter users. Of course, there’s always the strong possibility that I’m completely wrong. Plenty of similar sentiments were expressed by many when Twitter itself came out.

More from the Vine blog:

Posts on Vine are about abbreviation — the shortened form of something larger. They’re little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They’re quirky, and we think that’s part of what makes them so special…We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it’s through a 140-character Tweet or a six-second video.

Twitter makes no mention of an Android app, or an app for any other mobile platform, but it stands to reason these will come in time.

It should be noted that you don’t need a Twitter account to use Vine. Perhaps Vine will find its own user base, completely independent of Twitter.