Twitter To Cut Vine As Part Of Company Restructuring
Twitter said today that it will discontinue shortform video service Vine’s mobile app “in the coming months” but keep the website. The announcement follows the disclosure this morning that it will slash about 9% of its workforce in a restructuring.
Users still will “be able to access and download your Vines,” the company said in a blog post. “We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.”
The service, which enables users to loop six-second video clips, didn’t fulfill the growth ambitions Twitter had when it bought Vine in 2012, just before it launched in January 2013. It quickly became one of Apple’s most downloaded apps.
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Since then millions of users have followed the loops, called Vines, made by celebrities including Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes and Will Sasso.
But usage dropped as other platforms including YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram gained popularity.
“Viners appear frustrated that Vine never enabled monetization, nor developed a content/partner ecosystem the way YouTube did,” BTIG’s Richard Greenfield said in April. “As Vine’s scale dwindles, we presume less and less creators will focus their attention on the platform. In turn, the question becomes: Is Vine fixable or is it effectively dead?”
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CEO Jack Dorsey that month called Vine a “foundational” acquisition that, with others including Periscope, “are allowing us to create value for shareholders both now and into the future.”
In January, Jason Toff — a former YouTube exec who ran Vine’s New York operation — left to work on Google’s virtual reality ventures.
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