Vine to Youtube to Tik Tok- Oh My! — How Vine Changed the Game for Video Content Creator
“Road work ahead — um, yeah, I sure hope it does!”
If you said this phrase in a room full of millennials you are sure to get nearly the entire room chiming in to finish the phrase. This phrase is from a viral vine created by user Drew Gooden — a comedian and filmmaker who had his start on Vine. Today, Gooden creates commentary videos on YouTube and tours his comedy show around the country.
Vine — a short form video app — was created in 2013. Although it was only active for a short three year period — until 2016 — the app left a lasting impact on the social media landscape. Vine allowed users to create 6 second videos. Vine was one of the first apps whose content infiltrated our culture and made “normal” people into viral sensations. Soon after its creation, Twitter purchased Vine and took over ownership. Soon after this shift in power, Instagram released its IGTV video feature. This — along with the fact that the Vine executives were anti-monetization — led to the decline of the app. In 2016, executives made the choice to terminate the platform, but this doesn’t minimize the impact that Vine had on social media that came after it.
Following the execution of the platform, the executives tried to salvage what they could of the platform — starting with trying to make the 6-second-video content a part of the twitter platform. The founder of Vine also tried creating a new, similar platform called Byte. This platform allowed users to create 16 second looping videos. Many expected this platform to fill the hole that Vine left. Although Byte is still available today, is has yet to reach the success of Vine.
Lurking behind the scenes was Tik Tok — formerly known as Musical.ly. On this app, users could create 15-second lip sync videos. In 2017, Musical.ly became Tik Tok. Tik Tok rose to popularity in the USA in 2019 and took over the internet. Tik Tok filled the void that Vine left and became the app that users had been searching for to replace their favorite platform.
Like Drew Gooden, many viral Vine sensations are still famous today, taking their talents to other platforms. Many Viners transitioned directly to YouTube, like Gooden. Cody Ko first went viral on Vine and now has over 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube, host a podcast with a fellow famous Youtuber, has over 2 million Instagram followers, and recently reached 2.5 million followers on Tik Tok.
There are other Viners who went dark and popped back up after the rise of Tik Tok. For example, Jack Dail was considered a Vine star at the peak of the platform’s popularity. In the past month, Dail has resurfaced on Tik Tok after only growing a following on Instagram for a number of years.
Many of the content creators we know and love today had their start on Vine and, without the platform, the other social media apps and websites we know and love today like Tik Tok and YouTube may not be quite as popular today. The app also helped to open the doors for everyday people to go viral and find fame on social media — a phenomenon that continues today on platforms like Tik Tok.
Although Vine executives were against monetization, the same cannot be said for the apps that followed like Tik Tok. Vine made a huge hand in the rise of short form video content and paved the way for Tik Tok, which then came in allowed these creators who were going viral able to make money through monetization on the platform known as the creator fund.
In conclusion, without Vine’s rise to fame we would not see the popularity of short-form content that surrounds us today. Although Vine only lived as a platform for 3 years, its impact on the social media scene was lasting. Vine allowed creators to go viral and become sensations overnight. It was one of the first platforms that made this kind of fame and virality accessible to anyone and paved the way for influencers in the way that we know them today.
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