We recently met with Vine celebrity Matty Cox to get an insider’s perspective on the potential for video apps and what barriers people have been breaking through 6-second video clips.
Innovative social media content is essential to any brand, so who better to talk to than a guy averaging 350 new followers a day? Matty has made valuable business connections, poked fun at society, and even met his girlfriend through the Vine app.
We’ve taken highlights from the interview to show you what Vine, and Matty, are all about.
To start, how did you and Julia stumble across each other? How did you connect over a social media platform?
There was a contest, and her friend won. He was just absolutely hilarious, and she commented about it, saying [friend], “How do you keep winning these contests? I’d like a turn,” and she contacted me to say, “Do another contest.”
I had no idea who she was, so I checked out her page and thought to myself, “My God, this girl [is] gorgeous! I think I’m in love.” So we hosted another contest, and she entered, thank God. The moment she entered, I picked her as the winner right away. Her video was just hilarious.
So the fix was in? [laughter]
Yep! No, the video was just so funny and adorable. She won for the video. So we started talking through Snapchat, and it progressed from there.
At your first physical meeting, do you feel like there were expectations created by the Vine and Snapchat media that were impossible to recreate in real life, or were they met, or surpassed?
We’d already established that we had feelings for each other and the relationship had kind of grown…
Grown from Snapchat?
Yes, Snapchat to text, to phone calls, to FaceTime.
So more intimacy mirrored in advancing social platforms?
I guess so, I guess you could say that. [laughter] We were actually technically the first [Vine couple]. We just kind of kept ours on the down low, but we were actually corresponding before anyone else was getting romantically involved via Vine.
There was this meet-up [with Vine couple Jessi Smiles and Curtis Lepore]… she couldn’t make it, and then, the day before, I got this voicemail that said, “Guess who’s coming to New York?” I was like “WHOA,” and I asked her did she have anywhere to stay, and she said no, and I said “Well, why don’t you stay here?”
Vine rock star Matty Cox [far right] leaves some of his stardust behind for the lotus823 team.
*NOTE: Matty surpassed 100K followers when Jessi Smiles asked her fans to follow him. In a weekend he went from roughly 60K to 130k followers.
And you can even meet the parents over Skype, FaceTime, or something similar.
Yes, absolutely.
Tell us about Team Late Night Vine.
It started out as just tagging, doing a bunch of crazy stuff. Then we thought, okay, what if we’re at this point where we can trend anything we want? And, oh man, we trended some of the craziest stuff. We just came up with the weirdest ideas we could and got them to trend, because we were at that point.
You have no idea how creative people got! It was hilarious. The point was people would wake up the next day and see what’s trending, and be like how did they do this? So we said, let’s do this every Monday night and see what happens, and we did it every Monday for ten weeks, and it was all just crazy, crazy stuff.
[Unfortunately the Team Late Night Vine trending tags deemed NSFW by everyone in the room, including Matty’s Dad who joined us for the interview.]
That’s one of the most fascinating aspects of social media. Anyone can have the loudest voice, and you’re never really sure of what’s going to stick and get that momentum.
How do you feel digital dating compares to its IRL (In Real Life) counterpart? Do you feel that one method is more valid than the other?
When you go to a bar, and you look at a person, you’re not going to judge them on their lives, their goals, what they’re about; you’re going to judge them on how they look.
Through Vine, you’re able to see how that person is, how that person lives their life, and how that person feels emotionally for other people. And you can attach onto that and see how loving a person can be just through their Vines.
Do you think, with Vine, we’re actually painting an accurate portrait of ourselves? Or do you think we’re just showcasing our best parts through the short format?
Some people are one-hit wonders and some people are consistent…with their content. I think people are picking up on that consistency. That’s what people are falling for…these [Vine users] are seeing all these people that have a crush on them, and they’re saying, “I kinda like you, too,” and what’s wrong with that? It’s happening more and more all the time.
How do you monetize Vine?
Imagine never having to do thirty-second commercials again. Imagine six-second commercials. We have low attention spans. We could do away with the 30-second commercial altogether… I mean we can do complete plotlines in 6 seconds.
[Matty also briefly discussed with us how some popular Vine users are forming agencies where big brands would work with a Vine user who would be a brand advocate on the video app.]
Do you think Vine is able to shift paradigms and break down stereotypes?
I think we can, absolutely. Racial stereotypes are criticized, body stereotypes are criticized…I don’t have a six-pack, but I was able to pull a pretty hot girlfriend. [laughter] We’re showing people things like, you don’t have to be Taylor Lautner, you don’t have to be Ryan Gosling, you can be yourself. And we have these Vines with racially-charged humor, racial stereotypes, and you realize they exist to poke fun at the prejudice and show how ridiculous it is.
[lotus823 note: Vine star Marissa Mayne turned her 330K+ following into a partnership with TeamBullyProof.com as she regularly uses her comedic 6-second Vines to poke fun at her weight.]
After we conducted the interview, we had to opportunity to make a lotus823 Vine under Matty’s direction. Check it out!
All of us at lotus823 were pumped to get a chance to get to know Matty and he was very personable and charismatic beyond his 19 years. We’re certain he’s going to do something great with the talents he’s implementing now.
The power of Vine is only just being discovered, and lotus823 is very excited to have gotten an inside look at the burgeoning platform through the eyes of a Vine celebrity. Just remember us when you hit your first red carpet, Matty!
What would you do with 6 seconds? Post your Vines to our Facebook and Twitter pages, and keep checking the blog for more updates!