Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is considering bringing back Vine from the dead.
He posted a Twitter poll about Vine – a video sharing service that was shut down in 2016 – on Sunday. More than 4 million people weighed in and nearly 70% said that it should make a comeback.
An Axios report dove deeper into the potential Vine comeback and cited “multiple sources” that said Musk has already instructed Twitter engineers to work on the reboot. It could be ready as soon as the year’s end, said the outlet.
What was Vine?
For those who don’t remember, Vine was a platform where users could share six-second videos. It was popular before TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram stories came on the scene.
When its original creators launched Vine in 2012, they imagined it would be similar to what Snapchat came to be – a service where people could share short videos with each other. However, it “quickly attracted a new generation of creators looking to reach an audience with short, pointed stand-up comedy,” according to Variety.
Some entertainers who were on Vine in the early days of their careers include Shawn Mendes, Logan Paul and Jake Paul, per Business Insider.
A decade ago, Twitter bought the service for a reported $30 million, said The Verge, which said the company saw Vine “as a near-perfect video analog to its flagship app’s short-form text posts.”
However, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat grew faster than Vine in the following years and popular creators left the platform as they dealt with a lack of monetization options, said Variety. According sources to cited by The Verge, Vine’s founders were resistant to monetization due to their initial concept for the service.
By the time Twitter announced monetization of Vine in June 2016, it was already too late. Just a few months later, the company announced that Vine would be slowly phased out of existence. The following year, TikTok launched outside of mainland China and has become a popular video sharing app in the U.S.
What are Musk’s plans?
Even before Musk officially acquired Twitter, the Tesla Inc. CEO reportedly discussed Vine as he prepared to buy the company.
A tweet exchange about Vine this week between Musk and YouTuber Mr. Beast indicates that the former may be planning to compete with TikTok.
“What could we do to make it better than TikTok?” Musk asked.
Back when Vine was live, it used users’ social media follows to serve them video content. Today, TikTok uses an algorithm.
According to Axios, “Twitter engineers already have been assigned to look at Vine’s old code base, which hasn’t been changed or updated since the shutdown.”
A source cited by the outlet said “it needs a lot of work.”
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