History of Social Media, Integrated, & Inbound Marketing Thought Paper
Vine was short-lived, just like its videos. Vine, a 6-second video sharing platform was founded in June 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. It was purchased by Twitter in October of 2012 and set live in January 2013. A few months later Vine became the most downloaded video-sharing app in the iOS app store.
So, what was the appeal? Why is Vine so significant to social media history? The videos were short (six-second loops) and super easy to scroll through. You could be on Vine for hours and not even notice. Vine gave users the creative challenge to push the boundaries of what could be filmed in 6 seconds and still be entertaining. Vine gave a platform to everyone, but comedy and music had the most success. Shawn Mendes (yes, Shawn) began sharing his music clips on Vine in 2013 and in 2014, signed a record deal. Other artists like Drake (“Hotline Bling”) benefitted from their music being turned into various trends across the platform (Spanos, 2018). In the comedy realm, regular people such as David Dobrik, Liza Koshy, Lele Pons, King Bach, and the Paul brothers became well-known celebrities.
Vine also allowed celebrities to show their fans a “behind the scenes look on their lives.” Celebrities such as Drake, Kylie Jenner, Tyra Banks, Justin Bieber, and Harry Styles created content that was funny or gave users a sneak peek into their everyday lives.
Vine paved the way for Musical.ly, a lip-syncing app that merged into TikTok in 2018. For reference, TikTok hit its 2 billion global download milestone in August 2020 and is the 7th most-used social network (Sehl, 2021).
On October 27, 2016, Vine stated that Twitter would be discontinuing the platform. In a blog post, they wrote: “We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. 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” (Roettgers, 2016). Vine failed because Twitter could not figure out how to make money with the app, struggled to grow its user base, and failed to keep pace as competitors added features (Newton, 2016).
Vine turned everyday people into stars and helped push their careers in other creative sectors. There are memes circulating today that originated from Vine. Vine paved the way for TikTok, and for that, we should all say thanks!
References
Newton, C. (2016, October 28). Why Vine died. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-shutdown.
Roettgers, J. (2016, October 28). Twitter Is Shutting Down Vine. Variety. https://variety.com/2016/digital/news/twitter-vine-shutting-down-1201902457/.
Sehl, K. (2021, May 5). 23 Important TikTok Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2021. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/tiktok-stats/.
Spanos, B. (2018, June 25). 8 Reasons Why Vine Mattered. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/8-reasons-why-vine-mattered-129757/.