The Rise and Fall of VIne

The rise and fall of Vine

Image 1: Do it for the Vine (Wu, 2016). 

After being bought by twitter in 2012 and officially launching early 2013 Vine left many feeling optimistic about the possible success of the app and its future among the social networking community.

The strange choice of a six-second video limit seemed like a creative challenge and paved the way for a new popular content genre. Much like YouTube, its popularity is thanks to user generated content and the popularity of influencers using it. With a six second cap on videos, it made it very easy for content creators to upload multiple videos a day, leaving viewers with an abundance of videos to binge. With the floodgates now open and a multitude of influences, fans, content creatures and more, increasing vines popularity, the apps user count soured. Vine seemed to be the new it thing.

Then the sad day of October 27th, 2016 hit us. Twitter officially announced the discontinuation of Vine. 

What went wrong?

Vine’s initial sense of space as an entirely new social network for users to explore and engage in gave many a sense of excitement and freedom, the app was full of opportunity (LearnJCU, 2017). Many individuals gained great popularity through their content on Vine, and of these, many started as exclusively Vine-only content creators. In relation to Tuan’s concept of space and place, it can be seen that vine went from being just a space where random people can post any old dumb six-second video about being in their “mum’s car” (Tuan, 1977). To a place where you can go to admire your favourite content creator, or even troll the comments of a creator you hate if that’s more your thing.

Following vines increased popularity was a large number of vine compilation videos being uploaded to YouTube. This meant there was a decreased need for the use of the app to view Vine content.

With their new found popularity/fame, many content creators took to opening accounts on more popular/diverse networks such as YouTube and public profiles on Instagram and Facebook where they would post the same content from their vine account and more, in hopes of greater views, popularity and revenue (More info on popularity of social networking sites). This meant that vine was no longer a special place you could go to see your favourite content creator, they were now everywhere.

Let’s be honest, who is going to keep using an app where you can only see six-second videos when you could go to their YouTube channel and watch both their six-second videos and their every-other-length-of-time videos. Vine’s inability to grow and compete with other platforms was what led to its return from a place to simply a space and ultimately it’s downfall.

Alvarez, L. (2017). The role of social network analysis on participation and placemaking. Sustainable cities and society, 28, 118-126. Doi:10.1016/j.scs.2016.06.017

LearnJCU. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 3: Space and identity: Genre and transformation. [PowerPoint slides 4,5]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_2846469_1&course_id=_84764_1&framesetWrapped=true

Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. London: Edward Arnold (Publishers).

Wu, S. (2016). Vine is dead and Twitter killed it. [Image]. Retrieved from: https://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2016/11/vine-is-dead-and-twitter-killed-it