Reasons Why Vine Is Shutting Down
The video app that made the headline everywhere since 2013 is officially shutting down, which was announced through Medium.
In the beginning, Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll, created the company thinking that it would be a perfect analog to short-form messaging, just like its parent Twitter.
To us, it is a very shocking news, as it was the most popular platform nowadays. But why? We believe these are the following reasons:
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The novelty wore off
- the 6 second loop video is for sure innovative, but it is not bringing value to the audience. Not enough value for people to keep coming back.
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Twitter did it indirectly
- Twitter reportedly purchased Vine for 30 million in 2012 Oct. However, it never gave Vine any major updates to its functions, which caused the users to leave, due to the lack of interests. As we all know, without the users, companies won’t have any interests in advertising.
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Vine was too slow to change
- Vine had a long time to figure out how to monetize its traffic, but it never did. The Vine stars were not getting paid enough, and started to post less frequently. It then became a slippery slope, as advertisers also started to pull their fund away from Vine.
What’s next?
From this story, I think we would see more over-valued app business go under, primarily due to the lack of advertisers’ support. I believe it will become a big win for service like live.ly and music.ly, as Vine stars start seeking their next platform and the users follow!
What to keep your eye on
There is a quiet app brewing in the neighborhood called “afterschool”. Keep an eye on it, as it could either become the next thing, or get acquired by companies like Facebook and Twitter.
Would twitter go out of business too?
There is a possibility, but I believe that there is not yet a replacement for twitter. Although most people are not using twitter for entertainment, it is still an important tool for global conversation, sports updates, and politicians. There is not yet a better replacement in terms of speeds and interactivity. Twitter is different from a lot of other apps that it is not only used for entertainment. It is actually an important tool for a lot of government agency to broadcast updates!
