Twitter Bringing Back Its Best Feature?
Elon Musk is teasing Twitter users with the possibility of bringing back Vine.
This article is more than 2 years old
Elon Musk is officially in charge of Twitter and now he’s enticing social media fans by offering to bring back the beloved video-clip feature Vine. ComicBook.com reported that Musk tweeted out a poll to test the waters of the idea and the ‘yes’ column is currently sitting at around 70% at the time of this article’s writing. The people have spoken, so now it remains to be seen if Musk will actually follow through.
The poll ends tonight if you want to throw your vote in the ring and try and convince Twitter’s new owner to bring back one of its best features. With over 4.4 million votes already cast it probably won’t make much of a difference, but it’s worth a try if you’re a lover of Vine. Apparently, 30% of users feel just fine without it, so you could also cast your vote in that direction if you’re so inclined.
The demand to bring back Vine truly waned after it was effectively replaced by TikTok, which now draws in more than double the monthly active users that Twitter itself attracts. If Musk wanted to snap up some of that market share, maybe bringing Vine back wouldn’t be the worst way to go about it. Still, with TikTok now in play, Vine will have its work cut out for it to try and compete.
Vine was launched back in 2013 and exploded in popularity thanks to its short, attention-grabbing format of only allowing users to upload clips that were six seconds long or shorter. TikTok, on the other hand, allows you to upload much longer videos. Musk and Twitter could leverage this difference to set Vine apart from its spiritual successor.
Eventually, much to the Internet’s lament, users were cut off from creating new Vine content in 2016. Users could still watch older videos on the app, but Twitter would eventually take the video archive offline too in 2019. Now famous Vine videos mostly live on through YouTube compilations.
Dom Hofmann, a founder of Vine, would eventually try to bring the format back with Byte in 2018. Byte would be acquired and turned into the still-running Huddles, which never managed to reach Vine’s level of popularity. With the name recognition behind it and Elon Musk’s divisive popularity in the mix, Twitter might be able to recreate that original magic if they do decide to bring it back.
Reintroducing Vine would be yet another major change made by Musk after his takeover of Twitter. Musk immediately dissolved the board of directors for the social media company after closing the deal. Musk also floated the idea of charging a monthly fee for verified accounts to keep their blue check.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was contentious, to say the least, with Musk threatening to renege on his deal with accusations of the social media platform providing misleading numbers on their spam and bot accounts. Twitter threatened to sue Musk to close the deal, which ended up forcing Musk’s hand. Musk ended up closing the $44 billion deal to take over and there are likely plenty of more changes to come from the controversial billionaire.
