Jenni Mies
AP Econ
Mrs. Straub
11/29/16
Vine Shuts Down
The popular app, Vine, which enables users to record and post six second looping videos has reported that they are shutting down only three years after its launch date back in January, 2013. Although the exact date of shut down isn’t known, users have already expressed their concerns about saving their videos before the app is shut down for good. Vine started off strong as they became the number one app on the iTunes App Store only six months after joining the company. Vine has created new stars like Cameron Dallas, Brent Rivera and Lele Pons, with just naming a few. Most of these popular Viners have already moved out of the vining community into other more profitable and popular social medias for example Instagram, YouTube and muscial.ly.
Vine, being owned by another popular social media base, Twitter, has been moved into the shadows of the more popular partner app. Twitter has regularly been posting about when the app will be shut down and have already announced that the website will still be up, enabling Vine fans to re-live all the incredible Vines posted in the past couple years. The announcement of the Vine app being deleted came after Twitter revealed their plans to lay off nine percent of their workforce which is approximately 350 workers. According to CNN money, Twitter posted a net loss of $103 million during their third-quarter report. Dropping Vine will decrease their net loss and/ or increase their profit.
A theory that has been proposed as to why Vine is shutting down is that it has been more of a loss to the company than a profit. Evidence that backs up this theory is that when competing app Instagram launched their video feature, Vine never recovered. Vine lost both users and market share to Instagram. It was then that many popular Viners jumped ship towards more profitable apps and left Vine vacant. As you can seen in the graph shown below, when Topsy’s analysis ran a check for Twitter links to Vine and Instagram, it revealed a large Vine drop-off right around the time that Instagram launched their new video feature. Based on the graph, there is no evidence that suggests that Vine will recover as the number of links to Vine.co in steadily decreasing.
A second theory as reported by The New York Times, is that Vine was dead weight. Mr. Isaac, tech reporter for The New York Times has concluded that, “If you have an entire division of your company that doesn’t make money and is a real resource drain, that’s hard to justify keeping it up and running.” Vine had more than 200 million active users at one point but has recently been struggling to maintain traction as the company saw a decline in popularity due to an increase in the demand of other competing apps.
Vine had its “fifteen minutes of fame” or in this case three years of fame and is now ready for its shut down to cut down on company costs. The company's goal is to have Twitter become profitable independently. If you are really upset about the announcement of Vine shutting down, realize that in the long run it will help the company as a whole.
Works Cited
Bambenek, Cadence. "Meet the 30 Top Vine Stars in the World." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 28 June 2016. Web. 17 Nov. 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/30-top-vine-stars-in-the-world-2016-6#7-logan-paul-24.
Rogers, Katie. "Vine Is Closing Down, and the Internet Can’t Stand It." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Oct. 2016. Web. 17 Nov. 2016. http://heavy.com/tech/2016/10/when-is-vine-video-app-closing-shutting-down-discontinuing-date-access-account-saving-downloading-vines-twitter/.
The Layoffs Are Expected to Impact about 350 Employees across Sales. "Twitter Cuts 9% of Staff and Kills off Vine App." CNNMoney. Cable News Network. Web. 17 Nov. 2016. http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/27/technology/twitter-layoffs-earnings/.
"When Is Vine Video App Closing?" Heavy.com. 27 Oct. 2016. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/technology/vine-is-closing-down-and-the-internet-can
-stand-it.html?_r=0.
I never used Vine, but being on Twitter all the time, many Vines would always pop up on my feed. I'm not that upset about Vine shutting down though since I was never a part of it, but it is going to affect a lot of other people. People had careers based off this website, so they will have to move on to other platforms now. For example, Thomas Sanders or even Josh Peck had such a huge following. I never realized that Instagram’s video feature had this big of an impact because I always thought it was a flop. As a consumer of these social media apps, I always thought Vine had the edge on videos whereas Instagram would always be for pictures. Which I guess is not the case. Even if this may be a problem, I think a lot of these Vine stars can move onto creating videos through Twitter or YouTube since they already have a following and would be successful through these different platforms. When looking at the big picture, however, I think this will help Twitter a lot and not set them back, since Vine isn't as big as other social media like Snapchat or Tumblr.
ReplyDeleteVine simply could not over its fixed costs, which them to need to shut down their business. The app first saw high demand back when it was created, bringing in many users. Now, instagram and youtube has nearly destroyed its platform, luring vine users to their apps and causing them to leave vine. Vine has a creative six second option, but other platforms allowed them to expand upon that and make more money. Overall, Vine was an idea that had high demand at first, but the users quickly found substitutes in the monopolistic competitive segment
ReplyDeleteIt is understandable why Vine would shut down after such little time. Vine had it's famous stage when it was a big fad, but of course, new always takes over old. Vine's biggest success was creating internet celebrities, but now these celebrities have taken on YouTube and Instagram, and disconnecting from their roots. Vine didn't have to opportunity to expand their technology since their concept was so simple. It was impossible to live up to Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. I am an active twitter user and I have always seen Vines popping up on my feed. It isn't a huge disappointment to me and I think many would agree since they have this same experience.
ReplyDeleteOther social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr have incorporated the short, loop videos (Vines) onto their platforms to make their site more appealing to consumers and thus more profitable. Therefore, I don't find it very surprising that Vine is shutting down. Like you mentioned as well, the celebrities that were discovered from Vine now mostly post their videos on other, more popular social media sites or have even transitioned to more lengthy videos on Youtube. I agree that this is the best decision for the Vine company to make to minimize its losses in the long-run.
ReplyDeleteMany people are very upset that Vine is shutting down because it was a very successful app. But, I can see how other apps may have been a large effect on to its popularity. As you mentioned,once Instagram added videos, people started using Vine less which is also a contributing factor to why it is laying off its' workers. Instagram, however, has become very successful with all of its' new updates:for example, the new story addition may cause Snapchat to be used less as it did to Vine.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely isn’t much of a surprise to me that Vine is shutting down, due to the fact that I rarely hear of new Vines getting posted, and that the only ones I do see on Twitter are typically pretty old. It’s clear to see that the demand for Vine has decreased due to the points you made about how other apps are incorporating videos as well. Although it is not popular anymore, I feel that they probably made a large profit when it was, and probably aren’t suffering dramatic losses. In general though, it’s clear that they are at a point where it is best for them to shut down in the short run, because it’s highly unlikely that the app will become popular again.
ReplyDeleteSince I was not a Vine user, I never knew that Vine got shut down and Twitter was its partner. I have seen many people using Youtube to watch the vines instead of the "Vine app". It is obvious that it got shut down because its consumers preference changed when the other apps like Instagram opened new type of videos. There are several apps like Friendster and MySpace which got shut down due to technical problems and change in consumers' interests. In today's world, Snapchat became a big deal for consumers because it keeps adding new stuff which motivates everyone to keep using the app rather vacating it as it had happened to Vine. I feel like the social media market is a monopolistic market because they create and show different types social media and compete on each other.
ReplyDeleteThe opportunity cost for Twitter to keep Vine up and running is too great for them to keep it going. They feel that it would be in their best interest to shut it down and lay off the employees associated with it. However, this comes at no surprise since the demand of Vine decreased following the expansion of substitutes. Since Vine was apart of the Twitter name, this begs the question of whether or not Facebook will have to do a similar process with apps they have acquired in the past like Instagram and WhatsApp if and when they fade out. At the end of the day, it's all for business and making a profit, and Twitter felt that Vine set them back and hindered their ability to compete in the social media market.
ReplyDeleteOther social media apps have gifs and videos that are 6 seconds, which mimic what Vine did, making Vine virtually useless. It is sad in some aspects because Vine was pretty revolutionary in its time but since other websites use the layout that Vine did. If the company is losing money on Vine, there aren't any users on it anymore and people are still using Twitter, then it's not wrong for them to want to shut it down. I don't see much of an argument against Twitter shutting Vine down, it's just amazing to see the short lifespan of mentally stimulating apps.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I never used this app much, I did have an indirect source of it through sharing on other social media platforms. To me, it was an entertaining product and really had a good base for something bigger. I do see, however, that it was clearly a weight on the company’s shoulders, and wasn’t good economically to keep around. I think it was the smartest decision to shut it down, albeit not the most popular. Despite all the benefits to the company, I think the public will end up missing it, eventually transferring over to a competitor like Instagram. In the end, it’ll probably work out perfectly fine.
ReplyDelete