• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, October 2, 2013

As regular viewers of the hit nano-video social network Vine already know, things can get pretty surreal in there. Add in stop-motion antics from Disney theme parks and the result is downright trippy. But it is a family friendly kind of hallucination that Disney is recruiting its fans to build on Vine. To celebrate the launch of its own Vine feed, Disney Parks is kicking off with a user-generated content program, “Vine Your Disney Side” contest. Fans of the Magic Kingdoms and their cartoon denizens are invited to submit Vine videos that express their passion or interest in the parks and the characters.

Disney will begin posting the entrants on Oct. 7, and these curated picks will receive $1,000 and entry into a grand prize vacation to Disneyland or Disney World. The big winner also is being recruited as a Vine filmmaker, awarded a $10,000 commission to create a series of videos for the feed.

In short order the feed has already attracted nearly 10,000 followers and a healthy flow of content is already pouring into the #DisneySide tag. This is still a drop in the bucket for the 40 million combined social media fans that Disney claims across global social channels.

The branding message in all of this is that the company’s parks bring out your “Disney Side” that the Vine program aims to capture.

Over the summer, Vine hit over 40 million monthly users -- a remarkable growth rate considering the Twitter-owned project launched only this year. A number of brands are making creative use of the vine concept off of the mobile social network itself. This season Dunkin' Donuts used near-real-time Vine creations to replay key Monday Night Football plays and craft on-air ads. the novelty videos travel well, brands have discovered, and so they show up on company Web sites and in a range of promotions.