Despite its popularity, Twitter decided to kill the Vine video platform. At its peak, Vine had hundreds of millions of active users and countless content producers. Like Twitter, Vine focused on keeping its message short. People had only six seconds to tell their story. Despite the short length of the videos, or perhaps because of it, viewers loved the content. When you only get a few seconds, you need to make sure every second really counts.
Yet in spite of Vine’s success, Twitter wound the platform down towards the end of 2016. Old content would be preserved but new content was no longer allowed to be uploaded. In other words, Vine was converted into a de facto museum. Twitter had invested $30 million into Vine but decided that the project was a lost cause.
While Vine’s run was short-lived, it was also fruitful. Vine paved the way for many of the world’s most influential social media influencers, such as Logan Paul, Curtis Lepore, Amanda Cerny and King Bach. Yet in spite of all that momentum, Twitter decided to do away with the platform overnight, shocking much of Vine’s audience.
A raft of Vine refugees.
Of course, content producers would continue to produce content, but they needed a new platform. Vine’s closure created a huge number of Vine “refugees,” content creators without a home. Many of these creators had built large audiences and followings. A fair number had commercialized their own personal brand.
Suddenly, all of that was gone. Yes, Twitter enabled Vine-like features for its own platform. But Twitter is already crowded, and it’s a less than ideal platform for video content and content creators.
So where did all the Viners go? Some gave up, of course. Others moved to different video platforms, such as Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram. Indeed, many of the more proactive Viners had been branching out before Vine itself was shut down.
While Twitter’s official announcement seemed to emerge out of left field, the company’s apathy towards Vine…
