We've seen so many slick and beautifully manicured iPhone apps over the years that it's rare to be wowed by a newcomer. However, Vine does just that when you first pop it open, immediately launching a brief shared video clip without hesitation. And assuming you have a half-decent Wi-Fi or cellular signal going, it simply doesn't stop as you scroll down the feed, with each subsequent six-seconds-or-less clip loading quickly and without prompt, giving you a very small window into the life of whoever was on the other side of that iPhone. Finally, somebody nailed the Instagram-for-video concept.

Granted, that "somebody" is Twitter, and Vine is no half-baked offshoot of the official social networking app, but rather a standalone service that seriously impresses from the get-go. Instagram is clearly the inspiration here, what with its square frames and similar feed design, but Vine fills a void in your digital life that still photos simply cannot replicate. It's not the "new" Instagram, but likely another social sharing service you'll want to check during spare moments and fling your myriad life happenings upon.

Limitations keep Vine both effective and accessible. Clips can only span a total of six seconds, with no editing or filter options, and it's an all-or-nothing proposition; if you screw up the shot, you'll have to start again rather than cut out a moment of the footage. Keeping things short, sweet, and simple makes the clips more palatable for both the in-app feed and sharing to Twitter and Facebook, though, and streamlines the process of creating and sharing a clip to potentially less than a minute.

And it hasn't hampered creativity. In the early days of the app's existence, users have posted a bounty of delightful stop-motion animation clips, montages of everyday events, and odd little skits. With luck, the depth of clips will increase as users see the service as less of a novelty, and more of a way to loop friends and others in on the parts of their existence that need more than a still photo to convey.

While the smooth UI seriously impresses from the start, the app is not without niggling flaws. Notably, the inability to prevent random Editor's Picks clips from appearing in your main feed is disappointing, plus the fact that a pornographic clip was accidentally picked and fed to everyone shows that it's not only inconvenient, but also potentially dangerous. And if the community seems a little slow to take off after an initial surge of interest, don't blame it entirely on lack of interest or the scrapping of Facebook friend-finding support. Many pals that I have seen sharing clips on Twitter simply don't show up in the app when searching via that social network, so there's work to be done in making it easier to locate users you know.

Before Vine, however, I had zero interest in shooting and sharing video, due to the hassle and personal lack of purpose involved. Vine still has work ahead of it to improve on its premise, but its welcoming interface changed my mind on video-sharing with a glance, and the breezy and familiar platform may well entice many others to do the same.

The bottom line. Vine's easy and effective video-sharing approach and impressive UI make it another social app worth getting tangled up in.