Vine has died. Vine has risen again.
Fans of Vine, the 6-second video app owned by Twitter, were writing their eulogies in October when the social network announced it planned to shut down.
Over the weekend, the company changed its mind — sort of. Vine announced it would release a pared-down version of its app, in an attempt to appease its avid fans.
"We've been working closely with creators to find out what's important to you, to answer your questions, and to make sure we do this the right way," the company said in a blog post.
The new app, Vine Camera, will be available in January and will still let people capture the 6-second looping videos that fans came to enjoy. But instead of posting them to Vine's social network, users can share them directly to Twitter or save them to their phones.
The company still plans to close the Vine social network and is allowing users to download their previous videos from the app and website. An archive of Vines will also live.
For months, Twitter had considered shutting down parts of the organisation that were a drain on the social media company. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, has said that finding a path to profitability in 2017 is one of the company's top priorities.
Keeping Vine alive as it is now, the company decided, was not possible. Maintaining the app's infrastructure, employees, content and creator partnerships were costly. The network also suffered from declining usage and fewer repeat users this year.
Twitter had been in talks to sell Vine to several technology companies for the past few months, but Vine failed to excite enough interest to secure a deal, according to two people involved in the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly.
Instead, Twitter executives hope Vine Camera will be a compromise.
"Thank you for the culture that you have helped shape, and for the content you'll continue to make everywhere," the company wrote in the post.
The New York Times
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