
Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app - uptown
https://medium.com/@vine/important-news-about-vine-909c5f4ae7a7#.as5uverxh
======
Grue3
Never used Vine, and the videos from it never worked on my browser, but this
is truly shocking. Like, Google Reader shutdown level shocking. Twitter is
seriously clueless if they weren't able to make any use of such a popular
service. Especially when Periscope is still running somehow. Though it's only
a matter of time for that too now.

~~~
downandout
Periscope may stick around for a while only because of the current obsession
with live video. As soon as Facebook gives up on live (or at least stops
focusing so much on it), Twitter will follow suit and fold up Periscope. If I
were an engineer on that team, I'd do some proactive job hunting.

~~~
pbreit
Looks pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are all-in on live video for the
medium to long term. Twitter even has live broadcasting deals with NFL, MLB
and NBA.

~~~
mgkimsal
I'm not sure that translates to full support for any random twitter user to be
doing 'live' broadcasts. It may not be a huge impact on the infrastructure,
but when cost-cutting comes up again, unless they're monetizing it somehow,
I'd expect "random joe live-video broadcasting" to be on the chopping block.

MLB? NFL? NBA? I'm sure money's being exchanged to make it worthwhile to
handle that.

~~~
downandout
Agreed. I wasn't including professional broadcasts in my comments about
Periscope. There will always be a market for live pro sports, newscasts, etc.

------
OoTheNigerian
I don't get it.

Why not make it Twitter's Dedicated Video App as vine already has a strong
network which can be built upon.

Very soon Facebook will release their dedicated video app and Twitter will be
looking clueless.

I don't get big companies

~~~
dawnerd
Twitter has no idea what they're doing and they haven't for a very long time.

~~~
skylan_q
One of Twitter's goals is to not make it look like they don't know what
they're doing.

They're still working on figuring out the rest of the goals.

~~~
paulddraper
Stealth mode

------
partiallypro
I had bought some Twitter stock earlier this year, and immediately sold it
when the buyout rumors started because I knew it wouldn't get a bid higher
than that with Jack at the helm.

It is dismal that they walked into meetings with Google, Salesforce, Disney,
etc and they turned up their nose. Truly telling.

I've been a very harsh critic of Twitter's leadership, especially Jack Dorsey
for a while now. Think of this scenario, the NFL just signed a distribution
deal with the NFL, something they will probably lose money on. However, the
NFL just released new social media rules barring gifs and replays until after
the game. How did Twitter's leadership not put this together? You already have
an existing relationship and leverage with the NFL.

You could have easily managed to make replays exclusive to Vine. That's
exactly what Vine is good for. Imagine NFL teams having to post your social
network on every other social network so people could watch replays? No one
cares about Thursday Night Football, it's a garbage schedule with low ratings.
The money was with the replays, and they completely missed the boat on
leveraging their platform with the NFL's new rules.

That's just one example of total incompetence. Twitter is lucky that it is now
a backbone to journalism more so than Facebook, if that ever gives way...watch
out.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
I'm not a Vine user but the #1 value that service brought to my life is via
sports replay clips. They excelled at it.

------
ggregoire
From the founder of Vine:
[https://twitter.com/rus/status/791681274339622913](https://twitter.com/rus/status/791681274339622913)

~~~
toomim
"Don't sell your company!"

\- Founder of Vine

~~~
nextweek2
I don't understand (because I have never been in that position). And the TV
show Silicon Valley also promoted this logic.

However he exited at $30 million. Is his sentiment born out of a sense of
nostalgia?

Surely he is in a better position to create something than he was when he
created Vine?

~~~
napworth
Vine is a cultural unicorn that no one expected. The founder will be able to
make another $30 million, but he will never be able to create something as
impactful as it again.

~~~
groovy2shoes
Was Vine _really_ that impactful? I only ever encountered a handful of links
to content on Vine, and when the videos would play _at all_ , they were
typically just 20-second-long clips of something mildly amusing at best,
totally disgusting at worst.

As far as the social goes, I've literally _never_ heard someone say "check out
my Vine" or "look me up on Vine" the way I hear it about Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, etc. (and _used_ to hear about MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.…).

I'm genuinely curious: was Vine something big and impactful that I somehow
managed to sidestep? Or were my experiences with the service typical?

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Vine was very impactful on the members of the Vine community. Yes, outside of
Vine you didn’t see much links to it, but once you entered the community it
felt very personal. Maybe exactly because it was its own little place mostly
sealed off from the web. There were real, caring relationships between
creators and viewers. People were generally very upbeat and encouraging.
Creators showed intimate moments of their lives, often non-flattering, because
you were allowed to be vulnerable. You were encouraged to experiment and to
express yourself.

That created a bond between content creators and viewers, and between creators
and creators. Some creators became friends and moved in together. I really
liked the intimate, unglamorous moments that were shared. I think viewers
could relate to the creators and felt more content about their own lives
because they saw that all others had similar lives. Vine created happiness.

In contrast, on Instagram everyone tries to show off great locations, their
perfectly decorated meal, their toned bodies, their perfect lives. It is more
about showing off than creating a deep, personal connection.

------
MOARDONGZPLZ
Doesn't Twitter do the same thing as Vine now that Twitter does videos? I
never got into Vine, but kind of assumed this would happen when Twitter bought
Vine. Selling Vine outright would perhaps cause people to move to the new Vine
instead of Twitter video, so this (to me) would seem like the best bet to keep
Vine's users and migrate them to Twitter.

~~~
Shank
Vine's primary differentiating factor was 6 second looping videos. While the
Twitter platform certainly supports video, it doesn't have the kind of
automatic, looping, addictive format that Vine was good for.

~~~
lucideer
I think the issue might be that Boomerang has taken on Vine's role here, and
is more suited on the back of close Instagram/Facebook integration, whereas
Vine is quite separate from Twitter.

Focusing on getting something like this into Twitter itself might be a better
bet (though I suspect Facebook has it wrapped up for now).

------
anigbrowl
That's fucking stupid. I wasn't crazy about Vine but Twitter was first to
market with a brandable property taht quickly became A Thing. It was the one
innovative thing to come out of Twitter in the last few years, and now they're
shutting it down. If I had any Twitter stock I would dump it all on this news.

~~~
hmhrex
Well, first of all, Twitter bought Vine. So they did no innovation on that
front. Secondly, I think it makes sense from a business standpoint for Twitter
because they've incorporated it into Twitter, and they NEED to start making a
profit and this will help. Twitter stock may actually rise a bit due to this
news.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not worried about that, I meant in the sense of putting out something
innovative under their banner. The consumer is indifferent to whether
something was developed in-house or acquired, but is not indifferent to
whether a firm is regularly putting out new things or just being the same old
same old. And Twitter has just been the same old for a really long time now.
The only interesting thing on Twitter in the last year has been Donald Trump's
warped personality :-/

------
dejawu
What a shame.

Twitter has a unique position as a key point in culture and media. It's played
key roles in BLM and the Arab Spring. It astounds me that they couldn't focus
in on that and make revenue from that reliable core of people that, like me,
turn to Twitter before anywhere else when something is happening. But I guess
that didn't raise growth numbers, and that's what Wall Street wants to see. So
instead they're making all these desperate moves, messing with the timeline
and even considering removing the character limit - things that made Twitter
special in the first place.

I can't help but think that Twitter could've gotten to where it is today
without needing to shut down Vine, if it weren't so hell bent on being the
next Facebook sized Internet giant.

Not every kingdom has to be an empire.

~~~
marshray
> It astounds me that they couldn't focus in on that and make revenue from
> that reliable core of people that, like me, turn to Twitter before anywhere
> else when something is happening.

Yes, Twitter's role in BLM and Arab spring were invaluable contributions to
history, but how much did they really add to the bottom line?

Even if it was a significant chunk, how much can random external events like
that be relied on to provide recurring revenue in the future?

~~~
wpietri
> how much can random external events like that be relied on to provide
> recurring revenue in the future?

That's the entire function of a newspaper, to transform random events into
revenue via an engaged readership.

It worked on me. In my case, BLM was what turned me into a never-miss-a-day
Twitter user. There was a whole set of American voices I wasn't hearing
through my normal sources. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

~~~
marshray
> That's the entire function of a newspaper

Exactly. And newspapers aren't doing so well on the internet.

~~~
wpietri
Traditional newspapers aren't. But news as a category is doing extremely well.
People read much more of it now than they did 20 years ago, and what they get
is much more tuned to their interests.

Twitter in many ways replaces the editorial selection function of a newspaper.
It doesn't write the articles, but it does let people get a personally tuned
stream of news. It also in some ways replaces the opinion page; commentary on
current news is a major source of tweets.

So yeah, they can't be a newspaper. But they could be part of what comes after
it.

------
jorblumesea
Snapchat and Instagram moved too quickly and changed the market. Starting to
think that Twitter woes are mismanagement related.

~~~
artursapek
> Starting to think that Twitter woes are mismanagement related.

That's almost certainly the case.

------
zzzzzzzzzman
Wow, I really like Vine and am surprised that Twitter's visions for its path
to profitability don't include such a flourishing community.

Sad news keeps coming today... :(

~~~
yabatopia
I can't help it, but I find it amusing to see Twitter and vision in the same
sentence. I think the lack of vision is Twitter's biggest problem right now,
and not having a dedicated CEO doesn't help.

~~~
zzzzzzzzzman
I agree, but surely as a public company there needs to be some kind of vision
somewhere :)

~~~
majewsky
A surprising amount of companies have "make money" as their only vision.
Twitter is just bad at making you think otherwise.

------
xxbondsxx
Although a similar content format is available elsewhere, Vine's content and
community is pretty unique to their app. I'm disappointed to see it get shut
down in that light

------
caractacus
comScore reports just under 5m uniques for Vine.co last month. It may be down
on the height of its popularity but 5m unique users is a decent mass of people
to monetise. Seems an odd thing to kill and not at least try to sell.

~~~
corobo
How would you go about making any money off it though? Nobody's going to sit
through an ad when the video is only a few seconds long

~~~
Touche
I don't know the answer, but I do remember people saying that Google was
making a huge mistake buying the unmonetizable YouTube.

~~~
corobo
YouTube is long form video though. Plenty of content to advertise on. Where
are you going to cram ads in to vine without it being annoying enough for
adblockers to nuke them?

~~~
Touche
It's fun that we consider 3 minute clips to be "long form" nowadays. When
YouTube was being bought people said that it only consisted of short amateur
clips and copyright violations; two things advertisers would supposedly not be
interested in.

Now I'm not saying that Vine is the next YouTube or even that it _is_
monetizable, just that "we haven't figured it out yet" is not a convincing
argument, and surely its userbase would be appealing to _some_ buyer.

~~~
corobo
Well to be honest I'm not a hive mind. When I said long form it's quite likely
I was mistaken. I was under the impression YouTube started with 15 minute
videos which is infinitely longer than 6 second clips or whatever vine is.

"We're losing money on it and have to fire people from the main company we
should probably not keep this thing alive and we dont want competitors to our
main product now it does videos neither" is definitely a convincing argument

~~~
cunotaco
For a very very long time, YouTube wouldn't let you upload videos longer than
10 minutes.

~~~
a3poify
And then for quite a while after that, you had to "unlock" the capability by
uploading a few videos.

------
jackfrodo
This is really annoying. I don't and haven't ever used vine, but how much
could it really cost to keep hosting it, and let people continue using it? Why
can't companies be okay having products that are revenue neutral that make
people happy?

~~~
hart_russell
Who says it was revenue neutral?

~~~
bronson
Right. Given Twitter's headcount, Vine probably has 550 people working on it.

------
vermontdevil
Why not just sell it? I'm sure there's a buyer somewhere.

~~~
mason55
Maybe they think spinning it out will cost more money than they'll be able to
sell it for? It only existed as a standalone service for a few months, at this
point it might not be possible to unravel it from the internal Twitter
infrastructure.

~~~
MarkEthan
I imagine it's a combination of this and wanting Vine users to use the native
Twitter video functionality rather than be owned by another company.

[https://about.twitter.com/videos-on-
twitter](https://about.twitter.com/videos-on-twitter)

------
jarjoura
All the Vine celebrities have moved on to Instagram and YouTube. I opened it
up a few weeks ago, forgetting I still had it installed in a folder, and all
the big names I followed hadn't published anything in months. So I deleted the
app and decided it was pretty much finished.

------
konradb
It would be a huge shame if the same fate befell Periscope which I find hugely
intriguing - just the ability to look at some arbitrary place in the world.

------
winteriscoming
Never used Vine app and the vine video don't render on my browser which has
flash disabled. But having just read the features of vine app, I'm surprised
Twitter decided to let this go. An app which allows creating and playing 6
second video in a loop would, IMO, have been a good fit for advertising
content creators and Twitter could have used Vine as one core product in their
advertising platform - after all advertising is what is considered as the
primary way to make money from services like Twitter.

~~~
majewsky
I don't think advertisers would be happy with the 6-second format. If you
could deliver a meaningful brand message in such a short amount of time,
YouTube ads would look very different. (My proposition being that no-one ever
watches more than the 5 seconds before the "Skip ad" button appears.)

------
thisisdallas
Seems strange.

If nothing else, it seems like a fantastic ad platform addition.

------
at-fates-hands
I always thought the main Vine user base was mobile users. That's the only
place I've ever used it - which isn't much tbh.

Ironic how everything you create these days has to mobile ready huh? Then
here's a company dumping a pretty popular app which is used mainly by a
younger demographic who lives by their phones and social media?

I don't see this as a good move - and if its being done to cut costs, it's
still not a good move.

~~~
a-no-n
Yup, it's business suicide. Probably people too inexperienced to handle
success or have a clue where to go from where they're at. So they throw up
their hands, shutdown servers, let people down and miss their shot. It's sad,
like watching a train wreck.

------
robtaylor
Another lesson on brands being platform agnostic, big Vine, Twitter, Facebook,
$whatever numbers count for nowt.

------
oxguy3
This is pretty sad. I'm not a "proper" Vine user -- I don't even have the app
installed -- but I've long loved seeing vines via Twitter or Tumblr. I hope a
similar product comes along to fill the void and reunite the Vine community
(introducing: YouTube Loops??).

~~~
xentronium
coub.com? I thought it was quite popular, but apparently that's only in
Russia.

------
jrnichols
I loved Vine. Short hilarious videos galore. Not long winded vlogs on youtube.

I'll be pretty sad to see it go. :/ I think that the time limit was great and
made people quite creative with how they used the time. the ehBee family was
one example.

------
kilroy123
Seems like twitter is really starting to cut fat and trim down. I'm not
surprised at all. No one bought them out. They seem to be overstaffed with a
head count of ~2,300.

Sad though.

------
smpetrey
(Sadly) We should've expected this the moment Twitter acquire Vine. The Vine
team no doubt brought some amazing improvements to Twitter since 2012. Sad to
see it go.

It's kinda fun seeing a front-page of Vine at any date at the archive.org:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151202002305/https://vine.co/](https://web.archive.org/web/20151202002305/https://vine.co/)

~~~
evanelias
> We should've expected this the moment Twitter acquire Vine

Twitter acquired Vine before the Vine app/service initially launched. So I
don't think that sentiment makes sense in this specific case :)

------
shinratdr
So... Vine is shutting down? Why mince words? The app is the only part of the
service that you can use to generate content, unless I'm missing something.

------
math0ne
I don't get it, i mean vine is not changing the world but it still produces a
ton of very popular content. Seems like a huge active project to throw out.

------
rmc
What an incredible journey!

------
pkrumins
I'm not surprised. The application never worked in browsers. Everyone was
complaining about it for years. It was never fixed. You had to click the play
button twenty times to make it play. It was absolutely frustrating experience
and I just put a mental block on vine.co domain and app.

------
microtherion
I never used Vine myself, but I suspect many eyebrows will be on half-fleek in
mourning tonight.

------
schwede
That's interesting because Vine is shockingly popular with the younger
generation.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
After the big Viners left for Instagram and YouTube, many viewers left with
them. There were some holdouts, but instead of garnering 8 million views (what
they achieved consistently before) they were lucky if they got 3 to 4 million
views. It really felt like the community was dying.

Much of it has to do with monetization for content creators. They went where
the money is. If the big content creators leave, what else is there for most
viewers? The shrinking community also meant no one new trying to become famous
would touch Vine and produce content for it.

------
EA
Did Instagram's Stories kill Vine?

Watching [https://vine.co/Trench](https://vine.co/Trench) play tunes of Vine
was fun content to watch with my 2-year-old daughter.

------
ohitsdom
Truly shocking. I've mildly enjoyed Vines (not so much the community), and I
love the Twitter platform. But now I have no faith in the company or the
direction they are trying to find. Yikes.

------
danielcampos93
but what about all the vine stars? What will they livelihood become?

~~~
kodfodrasz
Is that actually a thing?

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Do you mean if “Vine stars” is a thing? Yes, it is. The top viners had
millions of followers, some close to 10 million. They became so famous they
could transition to TV, movies, fashion shoots. Many took their following to
Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

------
misiti3780
Any chance they will open source it ?

It's probably a pretty awesome code base

------
vecter
I applaud Jack for making a big move to try to save Twitter. I hope to see
more big bets from them, especially in the main app. The current course
clearly isn't working.

~~~
lostgame
'Current Course?'

I've been hearing about Twitter for 7, maybe 8 years, working in and out of
startups and corporate developer culture.

There's universally one thing I've always heard about the company - 'what's
their plan?' 'how are they going to monetize?' 'where's the money coming
from?'

This hasn't changed, or even become more or less obvious in almost a decade.

~~~
vecter
I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me ...

Sounds like you agree?

------
djhworld
I enjoyed using Vine to create small little videos without much friction, you
could share a loop with your friends really quickly.

Youtube just seems a pain in comparison

------
amelius
"Vine is an entertainment community where things happen fast."

Well, that was fast :S

------
cunotaco
Instagram (Facebook) ate it.

Would be nice, by the way, if they could release the source code. Having such
an example of a Flask app would be very useful for the community.

~~~
mburst
I believe Instagram uses Django [https://engineering.instagram.com/web-
service-efficiency-at-...](https://engineering.instagram.com/web-service-
efficiency-at-instagram-with-python-4976d078e366) In any case it's still a
pretty popular site/app on it's own. I don't see Facebook killing it anytime
soon.

~~~
cunotaco
No, I'm talking about Vine. They use Flask, and if they are not going to use
the codebase any longer...

Personally I like having a big codebase as an architectural reference when I'm
trying to learn a new framework. The Patreon source code (Flask too) is
public, by the way.

~~~
misiti3780
it is ? can you provide a link. it was hacked right ?

~~~
cunotaco
Yes it was hacked. Here's a list of the files:

[https://goo.gl/3K1VVF](https://goo.gl/3K1VVF)

And you also have here a direct download of the full leak, including the
database:

[https://archive.org/details/B93B1C2921EFF0846DA268968755D01B...](https://archive.org/details/B93B1C2921EFF0846DA268968755D01B6E9698DA)

------
curiousgal
I never knew Vine was part of Twitter, I guess that explains the horrible UX
of the web version.

------
xyzzy4
Congress should make it illegal for a public company to shut down apps that
see this much usage, unless the employees are quitting. Some users have 12
million followers.

~~~
sib
That is the last possible thing we'd want. We already have contract law that
covers the case where a customer has _paid_ a provider to provide a service
and the service provider stops without delivering. But, in the case of a free
service, where there are no commitments, service providers should be free to
stop providing services whenever they want.

~~~
xyzzy4
So you think it should be legal for Facebook to decide to shut down, for
example? Why does what the investors want matter more than what the users
want?

~~~
lmm
Because they own it, broadly speaking. I would not be at all averse to the
government nationalising Twitter (e.g. after acquiring their assets when they
go bankrupt, or by buying out the current shareholders), but while it remains
a private or public company it should have the governance process of one.

