Two ostensibly competing video products made sense, Twitter’s product director said, because Vine would be intended for “short-form entertainment,” while Twitter’s native video would be used more as a breaking-news tool. In January 2015, two years after the Vine acquisition, Twitter launched its own native-video product, which let users publish 30-second videos taken within the Twitter app or uploaded from their camera rolls. Twitter’s video strategy was never as simple as just buying Vine. No number of Internet sensations born on Vine could save it. A social network like Twitter is only as good as the number of people it can repeatedly get to use its platform, and the amount of revenue it can generate. Ultimately, Twitter was unable to capitalize on the teens and young adults who flocked to Vine. The best Vines look effortless, but can take hours to make. (Vine says the company has more than 200 million monthly active users.) In the end, what drives people to social-media platforms is some combination of curiosity, envy, and voyeurism, along with a willingness to participate on the platform. Vine, like Twitter, was an organizational mess: former executives, managers, and rank-and-file employees whom I spoke to paint a picture of internal politics, managerial disorder, corporate foot-dragging, and a nebulous video strategy, all of which hampered Vine’s ambitions, caused the platform’s top talent to flee, and led to an overall decline in users. Twitter, of course, appears to be in the throes of an existential crisis, with a plummeting stock price and paucity of potential buyers. But its fortunes mirrored those of its parent company. Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov, who was ultimately laid off after the acquisition, responded with an angst-ridden tweet: “Don’t sell your company!”įor a time, under Twitter’s stewardship, the six-second video service seemed like it might be the next big thing. On October 27, Twitter announced it was shuttering the platform altogether in a Medium post. This week, Dallas posted his first Vine since July to promote his upcoming Netflix series. Grier’s most recent Vine, posted in August, is a teaser for a video published on YouTube. Eventually, a lot of them abandoned Vine-Paul hasn’t posted a new Vine since April. Was Twitter, which owned the platform, investing enough resources in its innovation? Was Vine a fad? Slowly, the major Vine stars began experimenting with different social platforms: they took to Snapchat, they embraced Facebook Live, and they even turned to television-the medium all of these companies were supposed to disrupt. Others began to existentially question the platform. Some Viners were gripped by fear as their legions of followers stagnated. Soon enough, along came the introduction of Instagram video and the rise of Snapchat. Hayes Grier, Nash’s younger brother, competed on Dancing with the Stars last year, at the age of 15.īut, in retrospect, those would be the good days. Nash Grier and Cameron Dallas starred in a 2015 movie called The Outfield. A Vine star named Shawn Mendes signed a major record deal. Paul told Business Insider that MTV was interested in two different shows about him, one of which was tentatively to be called Hollywood and Vine. Like YouTube personalities of the previous Internet generation, Vine stars had just begun to find mainstream success. Somewhat miraculously, as their followers grew into the millions, fame beckoned. For a time, they spent interminable hours crafting Vines in each other’s apartments, or by the pool or in the apartment complex’s parking lot-such as this Vine, filmed in Paul’s apartment, featuring Paul’s brother Jake, Alissa Violet, Arantza, and Maverick, Paul’s Vine-famous parrot. For the Vine stars, teenagers and young twentysomethings-guys like Logan Paul and Andrew Bachelor (known online as “King Bach”)-the apartments served as a place to meticulously plan out, shoot, and hatch their six-second videos together. More recently, however, it was better known as the location of the W Hollywood condos, a bachelor-pad utopia that was home to a group of young men who made a name for themselves on Vine, the aptly named six-second video platform. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles holds a historic place in the history of the film industry, dating back to the earliest days of the motion-picture business.
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