Finally a pro-children Vine

Vine goes child-friendly with Vine Kids app

Vine Kids features looping 6-second child-friendly videos.Screenshot by Michelle Meyers/CNET

Kids are known for having short attention spans and it appears Vine is banking on that with a new app that should also help put parents at ease.

The Twitter-owned video-sharing company rolled out Vine Kids on Friday to let children watch looping 6-second Vine videos that have been screened for child-appropriateness.

"Kids love Vine," Vine head of communications and marketing Carolyn Penner wrote in a blog post. "So, we built Vine Kids, a simple new app that gives young children a fun way to watch Vines."

Since launching in 2012 Vine has steadily grown its audience to at least 40 million. The video app is known for users who upload and share videos that show people doing goofy stunts, playing sports and other high jinks. In 2013, Vine had a dustup after a plethora of porn videos appeared on the site, which led Twitter to give the app a NC-17 rating. This newest Vine app, however, could easily be G rated.

Vine Kids features animations, Sesame Street characters like Elmo and videos with cute animals like hedgehogs and puppies. Vine's goal is to have a collection of videos for a young audience that are safe to watch.

The company picks the kids videos by choosing from its millions of daily uploads in its regular Vine app. Once a child tires of looking at one clip, they can swipe left or right to get a new video. By making Vine Kids a completely separate app, Vine has ensured that kids won't happen upon adult videos.

Vine Kids is only available on iOS.

Vine bans porn and sexually explicit content with new terms of service

Vine has already taken measures to hide porn and sexually explicit content, but in its latest move the video sharing site has decided to completely ban such content.

Updating its rules and terms of services, Twitter-owned Vine states that one cannot post content that is pornographic or sexually explicit.

The stringent crackdown comes even as it was revealed that the mini video service was chock full of ‘micro porn’ films.

Citing examples, Twitter has jotted down what it means by sexually explicit and what one can post or not post.

Explicit sexual content includes depictions of sex acts, nudity that is sexually provocative or in a sexual context, and graphic depictions of sexual arousal, it states. On the other hand, Twitter will allow Vine content with depictions of nudity or partial nudity that are primarily documentary, educational or artistic in nature.

Vine believes that this won’t affect majority users, save around 1 percent. In itsblog post, Vine writes,” For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn’t really change anything. For the rest: we don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet – we just prefer not to be the source of it.”

Users found violating this policy may be suspended and eligible for account restoration only after they have removed violating posts adhering to the new rules and terms. Severe or repeated violation of this policy may lead to permanent suspension.

Those who come across content on Vine that violates the updated policy can report it by tapping the button with three dots below the post and selecting “Report this post”.