Remember Vine?
The Twitter-owned, 6-second looping video app was hugely popular for a period, launching the careers of some major creative talent. But in December 2016, the app announced it would be shutting down, with Twitter switching it to the Vine Camera app, a tool which enables you to view old Vines, and even create them to a degree, but without the Vine community.
As you can see from the average user rating (from The App Store), Vine Camera was not well-received, with the online community mourning the loss of Vine – including one of Vine’s founders, who, at the time, expressed his disappointment with Twitter’s decision to shut it down.
Rus Yusapov has gone on to become the CEO of the popular HQ Trivia, but one of Vine’s other founders decided to take a different approach to channeling his disappointment over his former creation.
Back in December, Dom Hofman tweeted this:
i’m going to work on a follow-up to vine. i’ve been feeling it myself for some time and have seen a lot of tweets, dms, etc.
— dom hofmann (@dhof) November 30, 2017
The announced was surprising, and no one seemed sure if Hoffman would actually go through with it, or be able to develop a viable Vine follow-up. But the updates kept coming.
three principles for v2:
– give an equal voice to every artist
– be as generous as possible to every artist
– foster a civilized, kind, inclusive, and absolutely non-toxic community— dom hofmann (@dhof) December 9, 2017
At some stage, Twitter also removed the @Vine Twitter account, signaling their dissatisfaction with the news, while also inadvertently adding weight to the reports.
And now, less than two months later, we’re starting to get details on how Vine version 2 – or v2 as Hofman’s contractually obligated to call it – will work.
According to TechCrunch, v2 will feature:
- Videos of 2 to 6.5 seconds which will loop, the same way Vines do
- The ability to capture videos in-app, or upload from your camera roll
- The capacity to film in vertical full-screen, and flip to selfie mode while recording
There’ll be no filters or effects, and v2 will look to take a harder line on copyrighted content, while also seeking to protect the rights of content creators with new tools.
It’s an interesting idea, and many will welcome the return of Vine in its new form – but it may be a tough battle for Hofman to re-build the app’s once-thriving community. v2 has reportedly been reaching out to former Vine stars to get them onboard, but many have now moved on to greener, more lucrative, pastures, platforms where they’ve been able to build huge audiences, enabling them to better grow their brands, and monetize accordingly.
That capacity will be very difficult for v2 to compete on – how, exactly, the app will meet those challenges remains to be seen. But still, v2 could be another content option, another platform to consider in your video process, depending on how its development and evolution grows from here.
Either way, it’s an interesting prospect, having Vine return. The question really is whether nostalgia will be enough to bring audiences back, or if Vine will find it’s time has passed, now that we have Instagram and Snapchat and so many other video options.
Like most, I’d love to see v2 succeed.
There’s currently no set date for v2’s launch, but it will be coming sometime in 2018.