Thought Paper 1 — The History of Social Media: Vine
In 2012, the social video platform Vine was created and was added to the App Store in 2013. Vine truly changed the way we know and use social media forever. Prior to Vine’s establishment, there were no social media platforms around with the sole purpose of sharing short videos. Of course, YouTube existed, but it was not intended for short videos like Vine was. Statista reported that in 2018, the total average length of a YouTube video across all categories was 11.7 minutes total. This statistic is incomparable to Vine’s short 6-second videos. Vine was home to over 200 million users in 2015, just 2 years after its app launch in 2013. More specifically, the majority of the account holders were between the ages of 18–24 years old, creating a young demographic for this app. Vine was even the fastest-growing app in 2013!
I chose to write this thought paper on Vine because of the significance it has to my life. As a Generation Z, I was born into and raised as social media was created simultaneously. I have experimented with many different forms of social media because of the large prevalence it has in society, and my generation’s intense fascination with them. Specifically, Vine was a big part of my middle school experience. Although I never posted anything on Vine, I used it to view other user’s videos. Many of these videos have now become well-known ‘memes’ and I still reference them in my daily life. Not only do I constantly reference jokes and quotes from Vine content, but the rest of my generation does as well; the strong presence of Vine is still maintained in society long after its existence. YouTube has an abundance of Vine compilations on YouTube for people to watch, laugh, and enjoy old videos that still bring them laughter and comfort today.
Vine provided many opportunities to the users who created content on the platform. In fact, there were a number of users who went viral for their content, sparking their careers as influencers. Brittany Furlan’s life changed from Vine after being named one of the most influential people on the internet by Time Magazine. In addition to earning that prestigious title, she finally was able to get a comedy sketch show on TV, a dream she had before becoming a Vine star. Nash Grier, another famous ‘Viner’ also found himself on Time Magazine’s most influential people on the internet in the 2015 list- a list that includes Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, and Justin Bieber- some of the most famous people in the entire world.
Instagram, the leading social media app known for sharing photos, increased its comparative advantage to Vine with its 2016 update which allowed users to upload videos up to 15 seconds. Before Instagram’s video update, there was hardly any competition to Vine. However, now with the ability to share videos and the time limit longer than Vine’s by 9 seconds, Vine now struggled to keep up with their app. Eventually, Vine increased the video length from the original 6 seconds, but it was not enough to win the competition with Instagram. Instagram was and still is much more popular than Vine: the platform has users from a myriad of demographics, meaning the outreach was larger and now the content could be even longer. Influencers realized they could make more money promoting products just by posting on other platforms like Instagram, especially after many of the admired Vine stars quit their Vine careers.
Despite the fact that Vine does not exist as a social media platform anymore, the influence it had on social media as a whole is alive and well. People who loved Vine and used it avidly were longing for that funny, short, content that they once had a few years ago. Although Instagram allows users to post videos, it does not fully replace Vine as its primary purpose is for sharing photos, not videos. TikTok, formerly known as Musica.ly, has taken and surpassed Vine’s spot as the short video platform. According to the New York Times, “TikTok supports longer videos and is less reliant on a simple follower model, instead employing assertive and opaque recommendations. It is loaded with a constantly changing set of creation tools, encouraging users to record to songs, riff on other users’ content and engage with challenges, hashtags and trends.” To elaborate further, TikTok’s main purpose is to share videos, like Vine, except TikTok does it in a more successful way. Without Vine being cherished by so many, video social media platforms would not be as advanced as we know them today. To quote a popular meme trend, Vine walked so TikTok could run.