After 4 years of satisfying its users, with an app that at the time drew a lot of attention from young people around the world for having a rather eye-catching feature, namely six-second looping videos, Twitter decided to shut down one of the few apps its users had a favorable opinion of: VINE.
Jack Dorsey's company, which was the subject of rumors about its demise throughout the week, decided to announce that one of its star apps and Social Networks, VINE, will discontinue its app in the coming months.
The social network where you could post six-second videos that repeated endlessly has been the company's second sacrifice.
VINE
What was striking about Vine at the time was the ability to create 6-second videos that repeated in a continuous loop. Two years after its creation, it was one of the social networks most visited by young people. In 2015, according to Twitter figures, it had 200 million monthly active users.
Vine was a pioneer in short videos, but then Instagram and Snapchat implemented them. Both also won over the audience that used Vine, and the market expanded.
According to Omar Gamboa, Director of Trend House, Snapchat's and Instagram's strategy has been more solid than Vine's. “Snapchat has stronger appeal for young people; it's more spontaneous because it creates videos that get deleted, for example.”
Why Did It Shut Down?
According to Carlos De La Ossa, a digital strategy advisor and blogger for EL COLOMBIANO, social networks work if they offer features that are attractive to the audience and if they build an ecosystem that makes users stay. “Vine got the first part right but not the second, since when other social networks appeared that added those same features, Vine couldn't find strong enough reasons to keep its audience,” he said.
The fact that Vine's only ally was Twitter also played a role, especially because there was no communication between the two networks. It's as if they attacked themselves: they started adding longer video functionality to Twitter, and that gradually finished off Vine.
On its official blog, Vine stated that they value their users and their videos, so they will handle the shutdown in the best way possible. “You'll be able to access and download your vines. We're going to keep the website online, and we'll give notice before making any changes to the app or the site,” is what they confirmed.
“Thank you, thank you. To the creators, to the team members over the past few years, and of course, thank you to everyone who opened the app to watch and laugh every day.” This was the message they posted for all of VINE's followers and users.
About the future, they said: “We're going to work closely with creators to make sure their questions are answered and we'll work hard to do this the right way.”
Another network heading down the same path as Vine is Periscope. Periscope is going to shut down because Facebook Live is going to eat it alive, and if we add YouTube with its live videos, there's competition, and the winner will be whoever has the most robust environment, is easy to use, and attracts people the most.
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