In today’s world, teenagers often dream of the glamorous lives they see on TV, filled with fame and fortune. They imagine living as famous as rock stars and actors or actresses. But ever since January of this year, millions of children, teenagers, and even adults, have been striving to reach a new type of famous: Vine famous.

On January 24^th, Twitter released a new app for smart-phones that allowed users to upload and share short video clips with a wide world of social media users. The app, known as Vine, went viral in just days. By August, over 40 million people world-wide were registered users.

If you ask most high school students, they would say the average Vine user has between 120-180 followers, and their average videos get somewhere between 10-20 likes. With just six seconds to make an impression on this crazed social media world, how far would you go to gain a couple extra followers or earn a few more likes?

“Malek” is a Vine user. I do not know where he is from. I do not know how old he is. I do not know what he does for a living or how much money he makes. However, I am pretty familiar with his younger cousin, Terio.

In weeks, Malek has gained over 360,000 followers on Vine. Why? Because his young, heavyset, charming cousin, Terio, is willing to dance and entertain for six fantastic seconds at a time.

Michael Daggett is a student at H.B Whitehorne Middle School right here in small-town Verona, NJ. Roughly 200 people follow him on Vine. But after posting a video of his friend diving into the wishing pond in the center of Willowbrook Mall, with the caption, “Do It for the Vine!” he received 1341 “likes” and 1461 “revines.”

William Taylor is a teenager who lives in Los Angeles, California. 17,766 people follow him so that they can see “GooGoo,” an old, rumored-to-be-homeless woman who entertains the social media users in a variety of ways. Taylor visits GooGoo every now and then, brings her small gifts, or even takes her shopping. In return, GooGoo performs a variety of raps and dances, or simply gives a couple “words of wisdom.”

Ten months later, Vine is now a useful tool for companies to advertise products and job-hunters to show off their skills. Ian Padgham was once a video producer for Twitter, but quit his job because of the inspiration Vine gave him. Now, he gives his 300,000+ followers creative and comical videos every day. He even started his own small business that helps advertise for bigger companies.

The popular app has proven to be useful in a huge variety of ways for people all over the world. However, the Twitter company and most of Vine’s 40 million users are hopeful that there is still room to grow and expand.