Twitter’s future may hang in the balance following failed attempts at finding a buyer (Disney anyone?!) and the recently announced layoffs of 9% of its workforce, the company recently announced it was shutting down its standalone short-form video app, Vine. According to a post, nothing is changing immediately — the website and apps will remain online for the time being, and users will be given a chance to download their Vine videos ahead of its official closure.
The announcement didn’t give any explanations about why Vine was being shut down, only stating that Twitter would share more news on its blog and via its official Twitter account in the future regarding what comes next.
While the plan is to wind down Vine’s operations, Twitter also says the website will remain online because the company thinks “it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made.”
However, for how long this will be is still unclear.
In recent weeks, Twitter’s been focusing more on its Periscope product and live streaming rather than the short looping video service Vine, which is home now to a number of creators. It even integrated live streaming into the service, offering to alert users when someone you follow goes live. It has also focused heavily on live TV, via partnerships to stream televised content with organizations like the NFL, Bloomberg and others.
Acquired by Twitter in 2012, Vine started off strong, becoming the No. 1 app on the iTunes App Store only six months after joining the company. At one point, Vine had more than 200 million active users, yet it struggled to maintain traction and saw a decline in popularity in recent months.
Competition from Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube made it difficult to stand out from the pack. According to data from App Annie, Vine has since dropped to No. 284 in the top charts for free applications on iOS, down from the low 100s at the beginning of the year. It’s still fairly well-ranked (No. 24) in the Photo & Video category, but hasn’t placed on the Entertainment apps top charts since 2015.
Year-over-year worldwide downloads of the Vine app declined 55 percent in Q3 across both the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower’s data.
Here at HoneyBe Creative, we never really got into the Vine craze. It felt like something that would be a craze one minute, and then lose out to the bigger content creation channels (YouTube, Instagram). But that said, it was still a popular channel for a large number. Are you on of them? Will you miss Vine?