On Thursday, it was announced in a blog post by Twitter that the company will be shutting down Vine, their s0x-second video service.
Vine was luanched back in January of 2013 and was Twitter’s big entry into digital video. When Vine came out, mobile wasn’t as big of thing as it is now. Most of the videos users would watch was on YouTube, and even that was mostly on desktop. Snap was simply a messaging app, and Facebook’s autoplay vieeo product was a month old, and finally, Instagram was jusst for photos.
But things are different from what they were.
Because of Facebook’s, Snapchat’s and Instagrams video audience grown, the stars that started out on Vine ended up branching out to the video platforms, like YouTube. Because of attention that Facebook, Snaptchat, Instagram and YouTube got, Vine’s attention didn’t really get as big of that attention slice. This lack of attention also affected advertisers’ investments towards the platform. The rise of Vine’s rivals, including a sibling rival in Twitter’s own native video product, rolled out in January 2015 and has let Twtter to focus less on Vine to the point of cutting it loose.
In terms of a timeframe of the shutdown, Vine’s death will occur at some point “in the coming months,” according to the service’s blog post. Until this happens, people will stil be able to check out the videos on Vine, download the ones they posted to the service, and possibly upload them to one of their other mobile video platforms. Maybe even Twitter itself.
Vine was the only place for this kind of thing. Still my favorite Vine of all time https://t.co/2zMvhouuNl
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) October 27, 2016
Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and now Twitter need to make homes for these kinds of videos https://t.co/pxgL4YSlFo
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) October 27, 2016
And these https://t.co/Q5yrVFvpni
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) October 27, 2016
And these https://t.co/V9tydg05Os
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) October 27, 2016
And these https://t.co/bFf7H5ETma
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) October 27, 2016