On Thursday, October 27, Twitter announced that they will be shutting down the video-sharing service, Vine, “in the coming months.” Vine, which lets users share short video clips, debuted in 2013. Twitter had acquired Vine in 2012 before the service had even launched. The news comes the same day Twitter announced it would lay off more than 300 workers, or 9% of the company’s global workforce, within the company’s sales, partnerships, and marketing teams. “Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today,” Twitter said in a release, adding that users will be given a heads-up and be able to download their Vines before the app shutters for good. Twitter will be keeping Vine’s website up indefinitely. “We think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made,” the company said.
“Don’t sell your company!” said Vine co-founder, Rus Yusupov, who was laid off from Twitter in October 2015, wrote in a tweet. Vine has struggled to retain its top creators (King Bach, Logan Paul, Anwar Jibawi, and much more). By July, over half of Vine’s top 9,725 accounts had either deleted their profiles or stopped posting to the platform since the start of 2016, according to research by Makerly. This data verified an earlier report in The Wall Street Journal that Vine’s stars were leaving for competitors like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. One famous Viner, Cameron Dallas, was even invited to do his own Netflix show. At the time of the report, Twitter told The Washington Post that Vine was still “an important part of our strategy.” While Vine was a pioneer in a short-form video and popularized the 6-second loop, it failed to innovate on top of this core offering and protect itself from rivals. Let us remember the gut-busting and cringe clips that were posted on Vine.