Vine. We all remember it. It’s that app where your funniest friends would post videos before Instagram Stories became a thing. Then you found people like Rudy Mancuso and forgot that your buddy even had an account.
Vine was simple: six second video clips on auto-loop and endless giggles. It was an unexpected platform that launched many content creators into internet stardom. That is, until it shut down. (That was a sad day here at CBM HQ.)
Editor’s note: Behold, the greatest Vine of all time.
What happened?
Four years after purchasing Vine, Twitter shut down the app in hopes of replacing it with their new app, Vine Camera.
The problem was that Vine stars, who had amassed enormous followings, had no way of maintaining their viewership since the videos weren’t posted via the app. Instead, they were given the option of sharing their videos through Twitter. This caused major backlash from the community, and, in turn, caused the end of Vine as we knew it.
What’s next?
v2. And keeping our eyes on Dom Hofmann.
https://twitter.com/v2app/status/955614548983271424
We see what you did there.
If you’re part of the tech world, Hofmann’s name might sound familiar. If you’re not, all you need to know is that he is the founder of Vine. From November 2017 until now, Hofmann has been teasing his followers on Twitter about a new project dubbed “v2.”
In a tweet from November, he said this:
https://twitter.com/dhof/status/936298690842636292
We haven’t heard much more about the upcoming app since then, other than the fact that it should release in 2018 and that the logo might look a little something like this:
https://twitter.com/dhof/status/938469576052011008
What we do know for now is that v2 is in development, and that it will, in some way, mirror the Vine that we came to know and love.
Will v2 be as good as Vine?
Vine was great because of the creators who found voices within the platform. But now, the question is whether or not these creators will return.
It’s hard to say. Some surely will. But many of Vine’s biggest stars have found other platforms that have allowed them to post content, grow followings, and create communities in Vine’s absence.
I’m thinking of people like King Bach, who now has amassed a large following on both his Instagram and his YouTube channel. While these accounts both haven’t reached the following that Bach had on his Vine page, his following is still very sizable, clocking in at around 16.5 million followers between the two platforms. It’s hard to say if someone like Bach, having found success elsewhere, would think about returning.
There are other Vine creators, however, who have gained much more success on other platforms after its downfall. David Dobrik is a great example. Dobrik managed to grow his following on YouTube to almost six million subscribers, while he only had a following of 1.4 million on Vine. It’s hard to imagine Dobrik returning to a platform where he had seemingly less success.
It may not be about getting the old creators to return to the app, however. With every new app comes a new group of users, and the platform’s success is directly related to the level of engagement from the community it serves. If v2 manages to amass a community of people that are even half as involved with the app as they were with Vine, it will make space for new creators who will perhaps become the next generation of Vine stars.
Should v2 reach this point of success, it could once again be the app that keeps me from ending it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_PSKpmSEoo
