Some good things just don't seem to last. One sad example would be the ultra-short-form video hosting App service Vine, which since its 2013 debut had launched a remarkable social media revolution during its heyday and saw some ordinary people the world over becoming popular moneymaking online stars through the nifty medium of 6-second looping videos. Then it was bought up by similarly short-form (messaging) service Twitter and, well, everything seemed to wind down into a gradual decay of sorts, ultimately having its new owners announce last October 2016 that Vine would be discontinued.
Last Tuesday, January 17 that long dreaded day finally came.
Goodbye Vine, hello 'Vine Camera'
If any Vine user’s being a little late in heeding Twitter’s advisory about downloading any video loops they want from the website, then it’s too late now. With the end of the day, Twitter is phasing out the original Vine for what they described as a “pared-down” version tied to your device’s camera, the unimaginatively named “Vine Camera” app. Twitter elaborates that this Vine Cam will enable Twitter users to do the usual 6-second looping vids, with the option to either save on one’s phone memory or upload directly to Twitter, pretty much internalizing the function onto its main service. As a result, the old Vine-share platform and user community is no longer accessible.
The reason for the deadline on Vine downloads is because Twitter will be preserving the original website as a – hopefully – permanent archive of sorts for all the Vines put up by its millions of users and internet celebrities. But just as no more new Vines will go up there, so too will it no longer be allowed to download the existing Vines after the 17th.
In the meantime, Viners with Twitter accounts may soon be able to have their followers from the old migrate over to the Twitter platform, although this has yet to be rolled out.
Reasons and commemoration
In a way, Vine’s fall from the competition was tied to the struggling fortunes of Twitter itself. The October shutdown announcement came after news that the app and social network service built up by Jack Dorsey was cutting down on its personnel due to steadily declining profitability of the platform.
As a result, Vine-under-Twitter was inevitably damaged by an apparent lack of product vision since its acquisition, finding itself beaten by rivals such as Snapchat and Instagram.
With the end of old Vine, its most profitable stars began either discussing its ultimate end, or paying it tribute on other social media – Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter as well. The theme’s the same: sadness at the loss of a great app, and thanks for all the fun they had.
