The Rise and Fall of Vine
In 2013, Vine was the app to be on. Vine was a short-form video-sharing app allowing users to share six-second looping videos. The app quickly exploded in popularity because, at that time, it was a one-of-a-kind idea that did not have any competition. But, just as quickly as it rose in popularity, the app quickly fell from fame. I chose to use Vine because of its lasting effect on today's society with all of the pop culture references that were created and because it became a jumping-off point for many of its successors, such as one of the hottest apps on the scene right now, TikTok.
The Emergence of Vine and its Rise in Popularity
Back in 2012, Vine was founded and launched by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann, and Colin Kroll and was sold to Twitter the same year before it was released for an estimated $30 million (Wong, 2022). The concept of the app was simple: creators would film and post six-second videos to the app. Upon its release on January 24th, 2013, it quickly grew in popularity. By April 2013, it had become the most downloaded video-sharing app and had amassed 200 million users (Rowell, 2020).
These six-second videos turned out to be the perfect place for fun and comedic videos. Some of these comedy videos went "viral," giving these creators a platform and giving rise to a new type of celebrity, an internet celebrity. The celebrities that gained success from Vine were called "Viners." Some of the most popular Viners who got their start on Vine were Logan Paul, King Bach (Andrew Bachelor), and even singer/songwriter Shawn Mendes. Each of these Viners gained millions of followers and billions—yes, billions of views.
In 2015, Mark Hoelzl, who conducted a survey for Business Insider, found that "Vine had the second youngest follower group behind Snapchat" (Vine — A quick rise and fall, 2022). Because of this younger following that used the app, it made it easier for these creators, amongst many others, to create a multitude of pop culture moments and memes, many of which are still quoted and used today. But as they say, "all good things come to an end." In 2016, Vine's growth slowed significantly because of the rise in competition. Vine lost roughly 80% of users at its peak time (Rohit, 2023). It was later announced that the app would be shut down for good.
RIPVine: The Downfall of Vine
After Vine's peak, its downfall was slow, but it was there. Some of the main reasons were lack of monetization and because of rising competition. Since Vine was making money off of ads, the app's top creators proposed a contract to Vine management to create a creator's fund, but they rejected the deal. The top "Viners" began to post their videos to other platforms, such as YouTube, where they could monetize their videos and actually earn revenue on their content (Jalan, 2022).
YouTube was always a big competitor of Vine, but Vine did not foresee Instagram and Snapchat becoming such big competitors. These apps quickly became a problem for Vine because they were large platforms adding better features (Jalan, 2022). One of the features was longer, short-form content. Instagram allowed users to post fifteen-second videos. Vine did eventually allow users to post videos up to 140 seconds to compete with Instagram but it was not enough. It became increasingly apparent that Vine was not ready for all of this competition, and prominent creators continued to move their content off of the Vine platform, leading to the ultimate downfall of Vine.
Creators continued to shift onto different platforms, and Vine was failing before our eyes. On October 27th, 2016, Vine announced on Medium, "Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we'll be discontinuing the mobile app" (Vine, 2016). It was then announced that the app would be shutting down and would be removed from all the app stores in 2017, but any Vine that had ever been published could still be viewed in the newly launched Vine Archives. In 2019, Vine shut down the Vine Archives, and now Vines can only be viewed by people who uploaded the ones they have saved to social media platforms or by watching "Vine Compilations" on YouTube.
How Vine Paved the Road for TikTok
Vine was no doubt was once a one-of-a-kind idea as it was the first short-form video content platform. Vine's video-sharing concept continues to play an integral part in social media. It paved the way for Snapchat and Instagram videos, now called Reels, and, most notably and arguably, the most popular app on the market right now, TikTok. TikTok's concept is very similar to Vine; users watch videos that are posted to the platform in a continuous loop. Though TikTok allows for content up to ten minutes, the concept remains the same.
Also, Popular creators from Vine, such as Shawn Mendes, Logan Paul, and King Bach, truly paved the way for influencers today. These people were the first real influencers that arose from the internet, coining the term "Internet Celebrity." Today, we continue to see a rise in influencers with how quickly videos can go viral. Being an Influencer is now considered a job and can turn out to be a very lucrative one at that, and it is all thanks to the "Viners" who can be viewed as the first internet influencers.
Finally, another lasting effect is the memes and the pop culture references. When I was a teen on Vine, my friends and I would constantly quote Vines back and forth. Still, to this day, popular vines will come across my feeds, or when I see someone with white vans, "Damn Daniel" will pop into my head. Sometimes, when I need a good laugh, I'll search Vine compilations on YouTube and remember the good old days.
It is evident without the creation of Vine, social media would not be the same without the short-form video-sharing capabilities and its endless pop culture moments.
Works Cited:
Harvey, L., & Wood, A. (2020). The Ultimate Face off: Vine or TikTok. In.
Heine, C. (2016). Twitter Just Shut Down Vine 4 Years After Buying It for $30 Million. In.
Jalan, A. (2022). Why Did TikTok Succeed Where Vine Failed? https://www.makeuseof.com/why-did-tiktok-succeed-but-vine-failed/#:~:text=1.,their%20creativity%20into%20a%20career.
Protalinski, E. (2014). In.
Richter, F. (2013). Infographic: Vine Is the Fastest-Growing App in the World." Statista Infographics. In.
Rohit, V. (2023). The Vine App: A Rise and Fall Story. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vine-app-rise-fall-story-vakada-rohit/
Rowell, C. (2020). The rise and fall of Vine: A brief timeline. https://businesschief.com/technology-and-ai/rise-and-fall-vine-brief-timeline-1
Vine. (2016). Important News about Vine. https://medium.com/@vine/important-news-about-vine-909c5f4ae7a7
Vine — A quick rise and fall. (2022). https://digitalmediaknowledge.com/audiences/vine-a-quick-rise-and-fall/
Wong, W. (2022). A look back at Vine — the six-second video app that made us scream, laugh and cry. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/look-back-vine-six-second-video-app-made-us-scream-laugh-cry-rcna10910
