Vine Rewinded
Before the Tiktok takeover, there was vine. An AI-free app that captured authentic moments and embraced human creativity. As we struggle to decipher between real and fake, gen z are yearning for the safety that vine brought. This November it has been announced that Jack Dorsey who is a Twitter (now X) cofounder is backing the resurgence of Vine. Renaming the app diVine the Vine website is now available to access old and new content from an archive that was backed up before its shutdown.
Vine once lived from 2013 to 2017 and was bought for $30 million by Twitter when Vine hadn’t even launched yet. Now more than ever we are reminiscing on how Vine used to feel. There are many influencers that are still extremely relevant today that began their career as their natural self on Vine which seems a lot less fabricated than the content being uploaded by influencers on Tiktok. Vine had coined the term ‘viner’ to describe those who had gained popularity on the platform. From Lele Pons to Liza Koshy, we are well and truly missing the comedy aspect of Vine. Vine became very popular as a source of memes and was the birth of countless viral trends that are still referenced to this day proving the significant impact that’s been made. After all, Vine was the original short form video content app and though Tiktok is now dominating the appstore, Vine had over 100 million users at its peak.
Its interface was very accessible to use and allowed users to both engage and view content but also easily create short form content and publish it. Twitter had, though, decided to close the app due to an intense competition between other social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat and an inability for it to evolve beyond the six-second format which was boring and frustrating consumers and professionals. Many top viners were jumping over the film content on other platforms that were offering more than Vine could keep up with. The shutdown of Vine came as a shock to most and the app suddenly spiked in popularity as users came on to say their farewell to the app.
Although instead of completely removing Vine, Twitter revamped it to be VineCamera which allowed Viners to continue making Vines but instead for their Twitter profile.
Fast forward to today and a window of opportunity for Vine has opened. As consumers are getting tired of AI generated content, Divine is going to capitalize on the gen z nostalgia and bring back Vine with a non AI selling point.
Divine is already available in its beta version on iOS, you can also be added onto a waitlist to trial the new app. The creators have also stated that the app will be open source which entails the creators having ownership over their content and the ability to control their algorithms. So, does Tiktok hold the crown or does Divine have potential to reclaim their number one spot through human creativity and reminiscence.
By Paige Sutton
