Elon Musk is said to have requested Twitter’s programmers to go back at old Vine code to see whether the social media app may be revived. Vine was a popular short video platform in 2013 that allowed users to create six-second video snippets that would then play on a loop. Vine, one of the first platforms to embrace short-form video, is credited with inspiring numerous subsequent apps, including TikTok and Instagram’s Reels.
Dom Hoffman, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll founded Vine in 2012. Twitter bought the platform months later in 2012 and opened it to the public in early 2013. Vine has 200 million active users less than three years later, competing with services like Instagram and Pheed in an ever-changing social media landscape. However, Vine’s success was soon threatened by a far larger force: Facebook.
Facebook ended up blocking Vine’s access to its Friends API, thereby killing the product. Vine users could no longer connect the app to their Facebook profiles to find other Vine pals. It then established its own Instagram short video format. According to court records, Zuckerberg himself approved of this choice. Following the limits, Vine began to lose ground, and apps such as Instagram and TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) began to rise.
Vine users will no longer be able to upload new content to the site after October 10, 2016, with users being allowed to rewatch/download old videos. The Vine website was totally shut down two months later, and the app was renamed ‘Vine Camera,’ which was not particularly successful. Twitter will later post an archive of all Vine videos in 2017, only to remove it in 2019.
During the network’s unclear future between 2016 and 2019, more notable creators on the platform went to other platforms.
Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers on October 31, 2022, if they should bring back Vine. Over two-thirds (69.6 percent) of the four million or so votes cast in the poll supported the app’s rebirth. And it’s evident that Musk’s attempt is also aimed at TikTok. He’s already asking his fans how they can outperform TikTok.
Twitter, on the other hand, has lately begun displaying its own short-format movies on the site via a new Suggested Videos area. This new platform addition has the same fullscreen, vertically-scrolling design that many other platforms have embraced.
