Facebook DIES ON THE VINE hours after Twitter tie-in

Twitter's public spat with Facebook continued on Thursday when Mark Zuckerberg's free content ad network appeared to have cut off access to video-sharing app Vine's "find people" function - which allowed Viners to ferret out their Facebook mates. The abrupt shutoff came just hours after the micro-blogging site bought video-sharing tech from the startup.

At the time of writing, it could not be confirmed that the lockout was a deliberate action rather than a glitch. However, it would hardly be surprising if Facebook did cut Vine off from its silo, given the recent stand-offs between Zuck's crowd and Twitter over Instagram - the photo-filtering service into whichFacebook sunk nearly a billion dollars.

Readers might recall that once Instagram became part of the Facebook family, similiar shenanigans played out between the two networks. First, the newly Facebook-owned Instagram killed Twitter cards integration, and then the 140-character tweet machine stamped out the faded-pic outfit's "find your friends" feature.

Some might consider all these moves to be petty, while others would argue that it was inevitable that as the networks started to mature they would become ever more protective of their userbase, which is essential to the true Web2.0rhea customers - the admen.

In testing, this hack can report that the Vine app, which makes six-second loopy videos and feels a bit like a very sophisticated GIF, is failing to launch the "find people" function by ferreting around Facebook's contacts list. It doesn't work and instead simply says: "An error occurred". But when you attempt the same search in Twitter, Vine works fine.

Naturally, The Register asked Facebook if this was a bug needing to be fixed - or whether hipsters should be worried that it had died on the Vine.

The company said it would get back to us with an answer once Menlo Park wakes up. ®