Social media giant Twitter has just announced the closure of their 6-second-long video sharing service, Vine. The company didn’t give a reason for the shutdown, but earlier announced that it was pruning off 9% of its current workforce due to slow growth.
“In the coming months we’ll be discontinuing the Vine mobile app,” Vine posted on their blog.
“Twitter was all about setting a constraint on communication – 140 characters – and with Vine, it tried to do the same to video,” said Ian Fogg, an analyst at tech consultancy IHS Markit.
“The problem is that Vine didn’t keep pace with the innovation from Snapchat, Facebook and other players in the market,” he added.
Despite having a dedicated fan base and decent celebrity adoption, Vine was never able to compete with Snapchat and Instagram’s short videos, which is probably the main reason why Twitter axed it. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Vine-like functionality on the main Twitter app in the future, though.
Rest in peace, Vine. You will be missed.
