First there was Nokia viNe and now there is Microsoft Vine. Both are social media applications but that is where the difference ends – Nokia viNe describes itself as more of a marketing campaign that allows you to use your Nokia device to multimedia your life in a geographical context.

Currently in limited beta and available only in the US with a Windows Live ID, Microsoft Vine, is the big company’s attempt to grab a hold of the social networking market and if anyone has the resources available to attempt it – Microsoft has. The application is a local community tool which allows you to keep in touch with people and places “that you care about”, offering you the ability to create a network of friends and communicate over Vine, Email or Text using a combination of alerting (short messages) and reporting. The Vine application needs to be installed on your computer  (XP SP2+ or Vista+).

A common alerting and reporting utility that connects you to friends and family, for those important and often unexpected times, is likely to become a hot topic over the next few years especially in light of their proven usefulness in emergency situations. Microsoft Vine even has a handy Emergency Card that you can print out and keep in a safe place to tell others how to alert your emergency contacts.

If Vine can hook into existing social networking services, which it already appears to be attempting with Facebook, it may finds its place as an important tool for crisis management.

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