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RIP Vine


djdiggla

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Man, I was just yesterday talking to someone about how Instagram was threatening FB so they got bought. Then Vine began to threaten Insta so FB trotted out Instagram videos to crush them. Well it's complete now. Next will be Periscope. FB Live was clearly created just to destroy that.

 

 

https://medium.com/@vine/important-news-about-vine-909c5f4ae7a7#.20l7xb2uu

 

 

 

 

Important News about Vine

Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we’ll be discontinuing the mobile app.

Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.

Thank you. Thank you. To all the creators out there — thank you for taking a chance on this app back in the day. To the many team members over the years who made this what it was — thank you for your contributions. And of course, thank you to all of those who came to watch and laugh every day.

What’s next? We’ll be working closely with creators to make sure your questions are answered and will work hard to do this the right way. We’ll be sharing more details on this blog and our Twitter account, and will notify you through the app when we start to change things.

- Team Vine & Twitter

 

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I might be ignorant and I've never seen a vine, but with this and Twitter (and soundcloud too, I guess) it seems that there's a huge rift between popularity and profitability.

 

Does this come down to the most popular things being free and not filled with adverts? I'm definitely no expert but it seems like 'cyber-success' has two very distinct stages - catching the public's attentions and becoming popular, followed by the awkward bit where the makers of these runaway success have to then work out how to monetise their popularity. It really amazes me how many huge companies seem to totally fail at the latter, but maybe the very nature of the market means everything is stacked against them and maybe a financial success was never even possible in the first place? Is it all just emperor's new clothes right from the start?

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It seems like by and large it is. You can make a profit selling metrics of users I would expect but the problem seems that companies go from being lean operating machines to bloated with too many mouths to feed.

 

Some best of Vines

 

And more

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Does this come down to the most popular things being free and not filled with adverts? I'm definitely no expert but it seems like 'cyber-success' has two very distinct stages - catching the public's attentions and becoming popular, followed by the awkward bit where the makers of these runaway success have to then work out how to monetise their popularity. It really amazes me how many huge companies seem to totally fail at the latter, but maybe the very nature of the market means everything is stacked against them and maybe a financial success was never even possible in the first place? Is it all just emperor's new clothes right from the start?

I think the issue is them being unable to grow the userbase sufficiently in order to increase the revenue earned from advertising to a point where the company is profitable. Twitter predicted growth that they just haven't been able to achieve.

 

2 years ago, Twitter told shareholders that they would hit 550 million active users in the intermediate term and over a billion in the long term. I guess it depends how you define "intermediate", but 2 years later and they're at just over 300 million active users - a long way off from 550 million - and the growth rate is slower than they predicted too.

 

That's why they have to shed some weight, otherwise they're gonna keep burning through cash at a crazy rate.

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Vine's strength lay in the limitations of the format and what that ended up creating. Good Vines are a real art. I haven't seen many in all the click bait 'best of' posts this last week, but there are plenty of compilation videos on YouTube. I did laugh a lot at this one I saw in someone's best of list:

 

https://vine.co/v/inAiBuI6UOX

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I could see that. Instagram has sponsored posts now too. Twitter still doesn't. Seems like Twitter doesn't get it on a lot of levels.

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