Last October Twitter announced that Vine will be discontinued in the “coming months” and the internet reacted in turn:
Even Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov weighed in:
Don’t sell your company!
— Rus (@rus) October 27, 2016
Vine is shutting down….sort of.
Well, the months have come. But instead of a complete death of the app, as of January 17th, it will, like a phoenix, emerge from the digital ashes as the “new” Vine Camera.
It’s not all changing, though. After the Tuesday of Rebirth, you’ll still be able to record the same looping videos and post them to Twitter or your camera roll. Vine assures us the videos will continue to loop on Twitter if they’re under the standard 6.5 seconds.
The big difference for Vine Camera though is that the Vine network will be gone.
The Vine.co website will transform into an archive, so you never have to forget all the 6.5-second videos you’ve made over the years—and they really want you to know that you can even download all your super creative Vines in a .zip file to keep for yourself (but only until the 17th).
What Happened?
Despite Vine hitting the #1 Free App spot in the Apple Store just six months after being acquired by Twitter, and regardless of its userbase surpassing 200 million, Vine just couldn’t stand the test of time. Users gradually moved to other video platforms—such as Snapchat and Facebook Live, as well as Instagram video.
According to an article by Casey Newton of The Verge,
‘Instagram video was the beginning of the end,’ one former executive told me. ‘[Vine] didn’t move fast enough to differentiate.’
Twitter announced the “death” (after months of struggling to add new users and bring in more revenue) alongside the layoffs of about 9% of its staff. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, stated that “finding a path to profitability in 2017 is one of the company’s top priorities.”
In the meantime, Vine has provided us with an option so we don’t lose the followers we’ve amassed since 2013:
You can connect your Vine and Twitter accounts so that your followers can find you on Twitter with our new Follow On Twitter feature. (Note that your accounts need to be public, and you must link your accounts in your settings for this to work). We’ll notify you through the app when this feature is available. We hope this will help you grow your audience on Twitter and continue making and sharing videos there!
You can learn more about this change on Vine’s handy-dandy FAQ page.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Vine & mehibi/depositphotos.com. Edited by Caitlin Rulien.
Screenshot by Caitlin Rulien. Taken January 2017.
