Forget scrolling from video to video — Vine now lets you sit back and watch an entire channel with just a single tap. After an update to the app on iOS and Android today, Vine will now include a "watch" button on all channels that lets you start playback of every Vine included to date. The button will work both on an individual person's channel and on Vine's curated Explore section channels. You can also select which order the Vines will play in, by choosing to sort the channel in chronological order, reverse chronological order (like a standard news feed), or by popularity.

It's hard not to think of Snapchat Stories when hearing about Vine's watch button — after all, it's a way to watch through a series of videos a person made, one after another, initiated by just a single tap. It's very possible that this mechanic will be familiar to common users of the two platforms and encourage them to watch more.

But for Vine, the watch button serves a very different purpose: it's not like these videos disappear or you have to watch them day after day. Instead, the watch button is aimed at making it easier to lean back and enjoy Vine, almost like you're watching TV. Vine increasingly sees itself as a place people can go for entertainment, rather than just another social network, so it makes sense to introduce a much more traditional way for people to watch video. The downside is that it may lead to less sharing if more and more people are passively watching, but perhaps this is the experience those viewers want out of Vine anyway.