In 2013, founders Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll released an app called Vine. The premise was to be able to post 6 sec short, looping videos. By December of 2015, there were already over 200 million users but over the next year Vine started to shut down, and was officially removed from the app store by 2019.
Twitter had bought Vine from the three original developers a few months before it was released and claimed they shut down Vine due to the developers not wanting the app to participate in monetization and a few years later the app was shut down.
Although Vine is dead, it’s legacy still lives. Many teenagers and young adults remember Vine and popular Vine artists such as King Bach, Thomas Sanders, Jake Paul, Gabrielle Hanna, and many more. Even years after its’ deletion and other social media apps with similar formatting such as TikTok have become increasingly more popular, Vine videos and artists are still relevant today. Famous videos include “Hi, Welcome to Chili’s”, “Whaddup, I’m Jared, I’m 19, and I never f**king learned how to read”, and “What are Those?”.
Vine was and still is an important part of Gen Z. Although Vine is dead and gone, we still remember the impact it had on us. Even if you were never on Vine, complications of Vine videos can be found all over YouTube and you can still find the reason why Vine helped shape so many of us today. (plus a lot of Vines are just funny so if you need a pick-me-up video, check out vine compilations)
Erin, first of all, clever title idea!
Iin a way a platform or app is “too big” for this assignment: on the other hand, it might feel like not enough if you wrote about a single Vine. (I think you’re not quite sure how much of a history of Vine you need to tell?). But maybe you could have done so! In other words, rather than beginning with the history, what if you’d started with one of those 6-second videos, now living on YT along with every other form of video-based human production imaginable—describe it, and then tell your reader how Vine made that particular “style” of video possible, how the Vine style / the Vine spirit has contributed to internet culture even for those who never used it…