SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter’s new proprietor and CEO, Elon Musk, is considering bringing again Vine, the short-form video app that Twitter purchased and deserted lengthy earlier than TikTok made the format fashionable.
The potential Vine revival exhibits the breadth of product concepts — together with previous ones — that Musk is toying with in his first week heading up Twitter.
An individual who works for Twitter mentioned exploratory discussions are occurring throughout the social community a couple of potential Vine revival, which was first reported by Axios. The particular person requested to stay nameless with out authorization to talk on behalf of the corporate.
It’s not clear how a Vine redesign and model revival would slot in with different large questions hanging over Twitter, similar to whether or not Musk will order mass layoffs or different cost-cutting measures or attempt to enhance subscription income.
Musk tweeted greater than 20 instances Saturday and Sunday, providing principally conflicting indicators about the place he desires to take Twitter and doing little to allay fears that hate speech and misinformation will flourish beneath new guidelines.
One in all his tweets was a ballot about Vine, with practically 70% of respondents voting in favor of bringing it again.
A number of former fashionable Vine stars appeared receptive to the potential resurrection of the app.
Zach King responded to Musk with a coronary heart emoji.
Lele Pons retweeted Musk and wrote: “Sure, please @elonmusk. Do it!!!”
Musk additionally solicited concepts about the right way to make a revived Vine higher than TikTok.
“What might we do to make it higher than TikTok?” he wrote in response to Jimmy Donaldson, higher generally known as MrBeast, who is likely one of the hottest YouTube creators.
Donaldson had responded to Musk’s Twitter ballot, writing: “When you did that and truly competed with tik tok that’d be hilarious”
Axios reported that Musk desires a reboot that might be prepared by yr finish.
However some mentioned it would not essentially be simple to deliver Vine again after Twitter shut it down in 2016.
Sara Beykpour, a former Twitter worker who labored on Vine, mentioned the unique Vine software program could also be too previous to be helpful now.
“This code is 6+ years previous. A few of it’s 10+. You don’t wish to look there. If you wish to revive Vine, it’s best to begin over,” Beykpour wrote on Twitter.
Twitter purchased Vine in 2012 for $30 million, CNBC reported. Like TikTok years later, the app allowed customers to make a brief video — solely 6 seconds within the case of Vine — after which have it play repeatedly on a loop in a feed with different movies.
When Vine did not take off, Twitter shut it down in 2016, prompting Pornhub to make a joke bid and certainly one of Vine’s founders to precise remorse he ever bought it.
Rus Yusupov, a Vine co-founder, has tweeted that Vine failed as a result of it did not construct the correct options in time, did not assist creators earn cash and did not embrace lip-sync movies as a development the way in which TikTok has.
Instagram in 2020 launched its personal model of looping movies, known as Reels, to reply the recognition of TikTok.
Lora Kolodny, CNBC contributed.
