Vine was one of the first short format video sharing apps of it’s time. It quickly rose to popularity along with its content creators, for its 6 second clips. Vine created some of the most iconic videos of the 2000’s so far, that people still quote them to this day. As quickly as Vine rose to fame, it as quickly started its fall.
Vine got its start during its beta phase when Twitter bought it for 30 Millon Dollars in October 2012. Twitter acquired it to expand into the realm of short form video content as at the time it had a measly 140-word count limit and no video features. The move was used to keep up with Facebooks acquisition of Instagram, which had a feature for sharing short videos to a feed. By 2013 Vine was launched as a free app, within the first six months of launching the app soared through the charts, amassing 13 million users. Vine had grown taking with it some notable celebrities such as Jake Paul, David Dobrik, Weston Koury and more.
Some of the most iconic vines were:
Even some celebrities such as Tyler the Creator, a rapper had his moment in vine history with this vine:
But as, quickly as vine rose it fell, despite having some iconic moments in history such as Daft Punk using it to debut a track listing for its album Random Access Memorie”s, Dunkin’ Donuts using it to create a vine format TV ad. These all were huge moments in vine history, but it was not enough to save the platform, from being shut down.
About 4 Years after Twitter acquired Vine, it announced its plans to shut down the platform. By January 17, 2017 Vine was officially shut down, due to a plethora of issues including, but not limited to limited opportunities for brand deals and endorsements, competition in the market, financial problems, and the moral dilemma of to allow ads or not. These led to Vines ultimate shutdown, and made way for now TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly to rise with a similar concept.
Musical.ly rose to fame sharing some similar ideas as Vine with short content videos, though nine seconds longer in length they were successful in allowing content creators more freedom to post longer videos and allow for companies to use it for ads. Influencers on Vine moved to Musiscal.ly (later TikTok) because it allowed them sponsorships, revenue, and endorsements. Vine was the steppingstone for Musical.ly to take off as interest in short form video content was peaking and people wanted longer clips. TikTok was not vines only competitor, Instagram and Snapchat created own video sharing capabilities, which led people to post more there, as well as YouTube where they could make a profit off their content.
After Elon Musk took over twitter he put out a poll about bringing vine back and here is the stats “69.6 percent voting in favor of bringing back Vine and 30.4 percent voting against it”(Chathura).Despite Vines fall people were really missing Vine and its content as shown by Elon Musk’s Poll only 30.4% of people didn’t want to see a resurgence of the platform. The Majority wanted Vine back in some way and that’s what they got (in some way). Although the Website is still up the Byte Company that started in 2020 to bring back Vine was short lived and eventually “In 2021 Byte was ultimately sold to Clash, another TikTok competitor”(Ramos).
People loved Vine because it was “innovative, taking advantage of the fact that people on smartphones prefer short, entertaining videos”(Brown). Vine should be credited for the development of video entertainment platforms and the short form content it cranked out! Without Vine we wouldn’t have TikTok, YouTube Shorts or anything else like that!
Sources
Exploring The Rise and Fall of Vine, the original TikTok (prohustle.com)
Vine — A quick rise and fall — Digital Media Knowledge
End of a decade: Here’s how social media has evolved over 10 years (usatoday.com)
