Why did Vine shut down?

why did vine shut down

Vine is a platform where users can share short looping videos. The category where this platform was placed was referred to as social media; it started its operation in 2012. The platform’s shutdown was based on various reasons, which would be explained in detail in this piece. However, many people had the most obvious question: If it had millions of users at the time then why did vine shut down? These are some of the questions people asked themselves when the news of Vine shutting down broke the internet. More so, people sometimes asked why Tik Tok performed better than Vine even when the two applications were doing something similar. As you read on, you would understand why the business folds up and obtain answers to your questions.

No business owner would love to shut down their business even if it breaks even; however, the opposite is the case for the vine platform. Vine shuts down because it was unprofitable, and other similar apps are gaining more popularity than the platform in terms of the continuous user base. In addition, the likes of Instagram, Tik Tok were a threat to the Vine app, which caused it to lose users rapidly and shut down.

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What was Vine, and what was the concept behind the app?

The Vine app used to be a video hosting social media app which permits users to create and share videos not longer than 6 seconds on their profile. It is a bit like Tik Tok. However, it has some other different features, which would be explored in the following section. To explain the concept of the platform, you can relate it to a platform that does the same thing as YouTube but on a much lower scale. It has the same concept as what Twitter does, and it is more like that for Vine as a video-based platform. For example, Twitter advertises itself as a microblogging platform where a certain number of characters can be shared on the World Wide Web. Similarly, Vine possesses a simple microblogging platform due to the video length limit; it has other social media features combined with it; meanwhile, it has failed to scale.

However, due to both Twitter and Vine’s similarities, it made more sense for Twitter to acquire the business and merge it with its platform for a bigger reach. The Vine platform was then acquired for about $30 million before the platform app had even launched at all. This was an opportunity for Twitter to gain the market share and compete with the social media giants in the video section, such as Facebook and Google. 

Certainly, the plan did not go as it was thought to be. Despite the idea being very innovative and an effective way to compete with other platforms, Vine gradually receded to the show’s back and became a history of being held. In the following section, we would explore why Vine became a failure in the tech space.

Why did Vine shut down?

The short answer for this question is that Vine failed because it lost its popularity among other competitive applications. Similar apps like Facebook and Instagram overshadowed the app while it was as if the owners were burning money and losing big time. Of course, there were other reasons why Vine had to shut down its operations. Aside from the money-making issues, there was no other competitive advantage for the app. Here are some other reasons why the Vine app failed to scale. 

Vine failed to meet the market needs.

The market is always a determining factor for any business that would scale and become successful. If the market isn’t favorable, the business idea dies and becomes history in the shortest possible time. Initially, the application was envisioned as a social media platform that would be a microblogging space for the users. People would be able to share short video clips with their friends and family on the platform. However, the initial idea was different after the launch of the application. It was quite different from what was supposed to be an entertainment platform for users was not achieved. Most users of the platform only turned to passive users and watched limited content created by other users; this made the platform have a minority user base, and then the lack of attention continued on the platform. Unlike another platform with many creators, the vine app failed in this aspect of business and could not survive for a long time again. The entire ecosystem of the platform was reliant on the creators who are supposed to keep enriching the platform with their video content but unfortunately, there were limited users to that effect. If the creators handed them off for any reason, the platform will crumble because. There were a limited number of them available to keep the job going. In that case, the key concept would have been to continue recruiting users who would keep creating content and getting the platform engaged. The video time limit was also a hindrance to what was observed and what is considered too short for the users to make use of. 

The monetization issues

The platform’s monetization was only made available to individual content creators; thereby, the actual business wasn’t making enough revenue to sustain its business model. Vine wasn’t ready to experiment with the platform’s monetization aspect and face the challenges to ensure that the business makes income. Failing to address this problem was one of the business owners’ death traps for the application. Having seen these flaws, Vine was not ready to have an all-inclusive package that would benefit both the business and the creators. More so, Vine would have included sponsorship in its business model to monetize the platform and generate revenues that would be sufficient for the business. Moreover, the business could not find an innovative way to give incentives to the users while they stay on the application to continue creating content that other users would enjoy. 

The stiff vine competition?

Vine had numerous competitors, making it very difficult to achieve the set plans and goals of becoming a microblogging platform everyone wants to reckon with. The available competitors came with deep pockets to entice the audience and the content creators on Vine, which then became a disaster for the business. Besides, short videos are standard from almost all social media applications such as Snapchat, Youtube, Facebook, etc. The first backbone breakage to Vine came when Instagram released the 15 seconds video feature on its application; this was the beginning of the end for the Vine app. As the market pioneer, Vine failed to improve its features and capture the market while it had its disposal almost free of charge. 

The Vine parent organization issues

Here the issue was mainly because Twitter acquired the Vine app to use it as leverage to build its brand and scale more easily. The entire concept was based on how Twitter uses the Vine audience to push its brand and gain more popularity. But, unfortunately, lesser attention was given to the Vine app itself, which led to the crumbling of the application. More so, Vine as a platform was not expected to be a standalone application that will gain the users’ attention and will also be invested in heavenly by the buyers. This was one of the reasons why the Vine app failed woefully and had no sustainable goal to push it through. You could have asked why Instagram was successful when Facebook acquired it and why Vine folded up while Twitter acquired it. The simple reason is that Instagram had to scale to a larger audience and extended its base while also reaching another peak of its business stage. Besides, there was several enormous attention paid to Instagram from the time it was acquired until now.  

Conclusion

The failure of the Vine app was not only based on monetization issues, as has been seen in this piece. The executive lacked the will drive to ensure the Vine app scale through the crisis stage. Moreover, Twitter created a lot of problems for the business, which made it obscure to the user base that was supposed to gain the attention of the application. More so, the original pioneer of the app left Twitter, which means there was no other person who would advocate for the app’s growth after it has been acquired again. Finally, there was a story that there were issues between the twitter executive and the Vine founders, which led to the founders’ departure in 2014. 

FAQs

Why did Vine shut down?

Vine had to shut down due to many crises, including monetization, executive-level issues and the limited length of video users can upload. In addition, there was no adequate attention placed on the growth of the application, which in turn leads to the demise of the platform. Aside from this, it wasn’t easy to scale due to the highly competitive nature vine found itself.

Why did twitter kill Vine?

Twitter had the option to continue money or dispose of the idea; the inability of Twitter to continue funding the app warrant the decision made by the organization to kill the app. Among these was one of the reasons why twitter shuts down the application. 

Why did Vine shut down?

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