ESPN
The proliferation of the instantaneous soccer goal Vine - the phenomenon where a seemingly endless number of Twitter users make six-second videos of goals within seconds of when they hit the back of the net - is one of the great sports internet developments of our time.
If a goal is scored during a televised game in any one of the world's top leagues, there's a 99% chance that there will be a six-second video of it online within a minute.
You don't have to wait for the highlights to come on SportsCenter. You don't have to go searching for a grainy clip on YouTube. You don't have to watch an ad.
You simply go to Twitter.com and search the name of the goalscorer along with the term "Vine," and you'll get a list of links.
Here's how it works.
On Friday afternoon, Wolfsburg's Ivica Olic scored an amazing goal against Bayern Munich, or so I heard. The game was being broadcast on GolTV in the United States, which I don't get.
But I saw this tweet:
So I went to Twitter.com and searched, "Olic Vine."
When you search with the term "Vine" on Twitter, it gives you a bunch of links to Vines. Just like when you search with the term "YouTube" it comes up with YouTube links instead of just tweets with the word "YouTube" in them.
Within a minute or two of the Olic's goal going in, there were already a ton of Vines on Twitter. Here are the search results:
Twitter
These Vines are all over the place. Most of them are taken by people pointing their cellphones at their TVs. The quality is sometimes sub-optimal, but it gets the job done.
Understandably, the big leagues don't like this. This Premier League in particular issued a warning that posting Vines was illegal, although that warning didn't seem to be heeded during the first week of the season.
But it's great for fans. If you're away from the TV during a game, you can find the goal Vine on your phone. If you can't watch the game, or don't have a TV, or don't get a certain channel, or just want to watch a goal over and over, it's the perfect remedy.