Stick a fork in it! Vine is officially dead and buried.
As of writing, Vine is trending #1 worldwide on Twitter – which is the first time it has been trending in a very long time.
Vine Announces They Will Be Closing Down in a Few Months
Vine put up a post over at Medium, and shocked the internet with a big announcement. In the next few months, Vine will be gone. “We will be discontinuing and stopping the mobile app,” they wrote.
At the moment, Vine revealed that they will be leaving the actual website up – like a gallery of Vines. So if you value your Vines, you will be able to download them all for safe keeping. They did not mention how long the site will stay up, but told users that they would make a new announcement if it was going to be removed as well.
Vine thanked all the users and creators. “Thanks for taking a chance,” they said.
Why Is Twitter Shutting Down Vine?
As you probably know, Twitter owns Vine. Twitter is currently in turmoil, with tragic earnings reports and large layoffs planned. In fact, they just announced they will fire 350 employees!
Twitter’s stock price has actually lost around 60% of its original value compared to when they first went public. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is currently trying to pull out all the stops to correct the sinking Twitter ship.
Why are investors so skittish about Twitter? Their monthly active user count (including bots and spam accounts) stands at around 300 million. This might sound like a lot, but it’s way lower than their social media competitors (Like Facebook and Instagram) – and the numbers are dropping.
Additionally, buyers are wary of purchasing Twitter. It was reported that Alphabet (owner of Google) actually walked away thanks to Twitter’s “limited cash flow”, a “bloated cost structure” and “limited growth”.
Now that Twitter is ramping up their video capabilities, they might have seen Vine as a waste of resources and decided to “trim the fat”.
Hey, at least you still have Musical.ly.