Vine Levels The Playing Field With Its New Update

This afternoon Vine rolled out a new update that will allow users to save and work on multiple Vine posts at once as well as the ability to edit and arrange shots inside individual posts on iOS and Android.

For any normal Vine user, the update is a welcome bit of news, making it easier to work on posts when it's convenient and offering the ability to produce higher-quality, nicely edited posts. But for the small, relatively unknown but very popular class of Vine celebrities that have built million-plus followings leveraging the service's simplicity and constraints, the update might be removing a piece of the network that made Vine special.

Here's how Ian Padgham, one of Vine's earliest popular users described the service to BuzzFeed in August:

There's something astounding about the way the human mind works when given limitations. Vine is so simple, it has so few options, but then you see all of the incredibly magical content that people have been able to create with so little. I think it speaks to our creativity and our ability to see less as more, to produce great things out of what looked like nothing.

Interestingly enough, Padgham seems to be a big fan of the update:

Though some of Vine's bigger accounts have yet to weigh in, reactions on Twitter are mostly positive as of now. Though there are early grumblings that the update lowers the bar for original posts:

More than anything else, it's an update that will satisfy a large portion of Vine's user base by letting users remove mistakes and generally making the recording process easier for the average user. It's exactly what you might expect for a service that's looking to court a wider audience as well as brands. While the power users might feel cheated, that's to be expected with a growing social network, and chances are we'll get some decent new Vines out of it anyway.