4 year old famous video sharing app Vine to be shut down soon

4 year old famous video sharing app Vine to be shut down soon
By Admin 7 years ago

According to an announcement on Medium posted Thursday, the popular short-form video-sharing app will be discontinued by Twitter “in the coming months.” "Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today," Twitter said in a release, noting that users will be given a heads up and be able to download their vines before the website and app shutter for good.

Vine is a short-form video sharing service where users can share six-second-long looping video clips. The service was founded in June 2012, by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll.

The company was acquired by Twitter in October 2012 for a reported $30 million before its official launch. Vine officially launched on January 24, 2013.

Vine, in a very short span of time became most famous short video sharing service, and, rose to fame when users could send quick videos and share it with the whole world. It was the idea of sharing short content with billions of users across the globe, which caught people’s eye. The service became popular specifically for funny 6-second long videos. Over time, the app came to compete with other social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. 

As of beginning 2016, Vine had over 200 million active users and there was enough content to counter the likes of Instagram and Snapchat. Many Vine users found a voice, friends, and careers through the app. The app, which had 100 million people watching videos every month and 1.5bn daily video loops, launched video on Twitter. Sporting occasions, where goals, celebrations and highlights were shared in short looping clips through Vine, brought the app to a mainstream audience.

But Vine has been struggling for some time, so Thursday’s move is surprising but not unbelievable. The app was never a revenue driver for the company, and it was no longer growing. Many of its top executives left over the spring and early summer.

The timing of the announcement, coming as it is on the heels of Twitter’s across-the-board job cuts affecting roughly 350 people, is a major reason why it is garnering so much attention.

The company addressed a letter to its shareholders mentioning the priority list of its future businesses.

Since Vine tweeted about this change, the internet has gone completely crazy, and the tweet has already seen 8k re-tweets and 11k reactions in 11 hours. Vine has always been a standalone service with very few competitors and it has always been in the limelight for having special content.

Vine founder Rus Yusupov reacted to the news, appearing to express regret at having sold the company to twitter: “Don’t sell your company!”

Either way, Vine will soon shut down. The company says that users will be able to download their Vine videos before that happens, but there has been no specific timetable announced. It is unfortunate that users will not be able to create similar content in the future but we live in a world where such companies come and go, and maybe there is one that is being built right now which we have no idea about.