Twitter decides to unplug six-second video platform
It has been announced that the popular social media network Vine will be shutting down. This is in line with its parent company Twitter’s decision to cut nine per cent of its workforce. Twitter will be cutting roughly 350 staff due to the negative turn of the company’s recent revenue.
For the last three months, up until September, Twitter has had a net loss of $103 million, according to NPR. The loss has led to its shares falling to an all-time low of $17. The low is linked to its low growth rate of only three per cent in active users this year. The closure of Vine is part of a larger plan to achieve Twitter’s aim of heading toward GAAP profitability in 2017.
Despite its decline in popularity since its launch in 2013, Vine is still a relatively active app. Userbase is not the only factor, although it is definitely a major one. In addition, the app has proven to be unprofitable as advertisers do not see it as a viable platform for their needs. The brevity of six-second videos is simply not a suitable place to put an advertisement that would most likely be longer than the video itself. The only other way to make it more profitable would be to introduce a paywall or premium features which would only be met with uproar by users. This leaves Twitter with only one suitable option—to stop support for the company. It is not, however, without compromise. Both the Vine app and website will remain up, and access to all the old Vines still available. There will be a total drop in any support for the website and app, and users will no longer be able to upload new Vines.
If you are looking for an alternative for Vine, many similar platforms already exist and are part of the reason for its decline. With the launch of Vine, both Facebook and Instagram adapted to offer looped videos. Instagram also offers more range in the style of video, with an entire 15 seconds for content as opposed to six. Facebook provides even less of a limit, although is such an amalgamation of different features from various social media that its video section is not a key aspect of the app. Vine celebrities have recognized the need to expand from the get go, and many have used Vine to gain an initial following and then either migrated or expanded to these other platforms.
So fear not, faithful Vine viewers, the content you enjoy will still be available on Vine itself and new content will be created on other social media platforms. Change, while initially disappointing, is not all that bad—if we did not evolve, we would still be in an age of MySpace and Friendster.
Photo courtesy of Admin Public Domain Martyn Gorman (CC 2.0).