The Rise and Fall of Vine

in bringing back the video sharing service Vine. He tweeted out a poll asking if Twitter should bring back that video platform, and Musk has a habit of creating polls crafted to get high engagement, so at first it was a little tricky to gauge whether this was an earnest indication that the dead product is headed toward a resurrection. But Axios reports that sources within Twitter have been told to get to work on a rebooted version of Vine, with the goal of having it launched by year's end,

which is coming up pretty darn soon. So it's a very aggressive timetable. But from what we hear inside Twitter, that seems like that's kind of Musk's m O right now, and I thought, you know what, in the meantime, how about I talked about the previous incarnation of Vine, because it really felt like Vine was a product ahead of its time, one that at its height was extremely popular and helped pave the way for TikTok later on, as well as like Instagram reels and that kind of stuff.

So what is the story on Vine. Well, it all began back in two thousand and twelve at a company called jet Center. There were three colleagues at this company, Tom Hoffman, Russ Yusuprov and Uh and Colin Kroll, and they were working for this hotel booking travel site. Kroll was the CTO. Hoffman was a developer, Yusupov was a designer, and this company would later get acquired by trip Advisor in two thousand thirteen. But by then these three guys

had moved on. They were all in their mid twenties at this time in two thousand twelve, and they found they had a common desire to create something of their own. They all had had experience working at different companies and they kind of wanted to make their own startup and they were gravitating toward social networks and services, which in two thousand twelve was pretty much what everyone was interested

in tapping into. Moreover, while social media sites like Facebook would let you share posts with your friends, and Twitter would let you share what you were having for lunch with friends and strange yours, and Instagram let you share photos, no one had really landed on a good mobile app to create, edit and share videos. You know, this was a pretty tricky time to do that because we were not yet in a really mobile broadband era, so there was some opportunity there for someone to go in and

create something that could really make a big splash. So they decided they were going to create a smartphone video app, an app made to create, edit and share videos. Uh. And they wanted something beyond just a point and shoot approach, right. They really wanted something where creators could make innovative videos. They could actually do their video in a series of edits, so they wouldn't have to just do one long take. You can actually divide that up. And their approach was

pretty simple when they designed it. They would have a record feature where you would hold your finger down on the screen to record, and if you lifted your finger off the screen, then the recording would pause and it would be a cut, and then when you put your finger down again, it would start recording again, so you could create videos through a series of cuts. This way, it was the simplest, most primitive type of in camera editing, but it created an opportunity for really innovative people to

use the app to tell stories. In fact, there are some truly uh phenomenal creators who use this very simple approach to make really compelling or hilarious or inspiring videos. In some cases now early on in the development process, this is before they launched the app, they weren't really thinking of a time limit for videos. They were just letting you go for as long as you needed to go, and then once you were done, you could share your

video with others. But since they were focusing on smartphones and people were mostly sharing things like their friends who were testing this, we're mostly sharing things that by texting each other, limitations and bandwidth as well as storage meant that they really had to start thinking about setting a time limit or else the videos created would be so large that uh it would gum up your phone to try and send one to someone else, and it would

be a frustrating experience. So they decided, well, we need to limit how long these videos can be for the purposes of utility, and it had to be something that could be share able. And you couldn't really just share a ten minute long video instantly from one phone to another, like like sending a photograph was simple, but sending a long video was another matter. So they started to experiment

with different time limits. They ultimately decided to limit the videos to around six seconds, six and a half something like that. And that is a short amount of time, Like, you can't do a whole lot in six seconds. You can do more than you might think, but you know, obviously it is a strict limit. This would be long enough to send a quick video. You know, maybe you want to wish someone a happy birthday, or you have a corny dad joke that you want to use to

make your buddies cringe. That would be my way of using it if I were to take advantage of Vine today. But six seconds is really short. It would be really easy to miss what's going on as you play a video. Right, So let's say you get a video and you push play. If it's only six seconds long, and you're fumbling for earbuds or something, You've already missed the video by the time you turn back to it. So the team made another decision that would give Vine it's particular kind of

twist its character. They designed the app so that when you opened the video, the video would automatically loop once it reached its end, so go right back to the beginning. So yeah, each video is just six or so seconds long, but it will keep looping until you stop bit. The app would allow users to also comment on posted videos, so it created a more social experience rather than just you know, sharing videos back and forth. That there was a user generated content part of the response as well,

and that made a big difference. The three decided that they would call the app Vine, and they founded their company in the summer of two thousand and twelve. Now they were still working on that app four months later in October, but then they got an offer they couldn't or at least didn't refuse, though at least one of the founders said in subsequent times that he wishes they

had refused it. We'll get to that. And the offer came from Drumroll Please Twitter, and the offer was for a reported thirty million dollars, So you're looking at three co founders. That's ten million apiece. Not bad, that's a lot of check. Also a side note, while I was researching this, actually came across a site that has a really bad typo in it because that site claimed that the sale was for thirty billion dollars. That is a

a big difference. I think if the offer had been in the billions, the founders wouldn't have felt any regret at all about selling out in two thousand twelve, I mean, why would you. Anyway, Twitter was on a bit of a tear back in two thousand and twelve. The company had already acquired several other companies and products. They included ones like Summifi, Posterous, Daisy, and rest Engine, among several others.

That's just for two thousand twelve. So Twitter was on like this crazy growth streak and was in a boom period. And it's kind of funny because while the company had first started launching monetization strategies in twenty two years earlier, it wouldn't be until two thousand eighteen that Twitter would post its first profitable quarter. So while they were generating revenue, they were by no means profitable, and yet Twitter was scooping up lots of other companies all along the way,

so that was kind of a crazy thing. In fact, that's one of the elements that people point to a Twitter saying that perhaps this is a company that has a history of questionable management decisions. Uying at this point was a jang Kee Unstable app that the three colleagues had basically only really shared with their close friends, and

so they're close friends were acting as beta testers. They were trying out the app, creating videos, sending them to each other, and then giving feedback on what their experience was like. And initially the app had some pretty interesting

limitations too. For example, at first the app only allowed you to record with the back facing camera on an iPhone, and you know, with your basic smartphone, the higher resolution camera is on the back, so at least that means you've got the better of the cameras as your camera for your vines. But it also meant that if you want to make a vine of yourself, like in selfie mode, you would have to do it with the screen facing away from you because only the back camera would work.

So it's really hard to tell if you had framed the video up properly, and for a video with multiple cuts, if you screwed up a later cut, like you get your first cut, you know, your first, your first segment,

it's perfect. You start your second and something goes wrong, you know, whatever it may be, maybe you flubb a line, maybe a light goes out, whatever it is, you would have to go back to the beginning and start all over again, or you would just have to live with whatever the mistake was in the video and send it out that way, you could not delete a single segment and just redo that segment. You had to start from

the beginning. Twitter saw potential in this product. The acquisition would bring the three Vine co founders over to Twitter itself. There they would continue for a time working on the app with the goal of launching it under the Twitter umbrella. It also meant signing over the exclusive rights to their creation to Twitter. So they took the deal, and uh, like Lando Calrisian, some of them felt that that deal was getting worse all the time. I'll explain more when

we come back from this quick break. So Twitter acquires Vine in October two thousand twelve. Keep in mind the app has not launched yet. People are starting to hear about it because it had some buzz. I mean, Twitter heard about it, but it was in a closed beta, so it's not like it was in widespread distribution. What followed Twitter's acquisition was three months of intense development and

in January. In fact, on January two thousand thirteen, the Vine app would officially launch on the Apple App Store, and it became popular fairly quickly. In fact, it hit the top of Apple's charts by April. For the free apps available on iOS, Android users would have to wait until June second of two thousand thirteen, and Windows Phone, which was still a thing back then, would get its version in November two thousand thirteen. Now, the launch of Vine gave birth to a really wild and weird era

of user creativity. Some vines were pretty straightforward. You might get a sixth second clip of someone singing or playing a song, for example, and that actually helped launch a few careers in the music business. You had people who got discovered because they had created a viral vine of them singing some popular song. Other vines were comedy bits, usually in bell with fun edits to emphasize an absurd punchline.

A few folks got really good at creating six second long videos that used edit to editing these cuts to create effects that would actually be impossible to pull off in the real world. Like you might be running toward a wall and then because of a cut, it looks like you've just passed through the wall by magic right just magically telepoint to the other side of the wall. That was something that was possible if you were really good at framing up your video and you had a

clever edit in there. A lot of these would take a lot of trial and error to get just right, to get the angle right, to get the timing right, and the payoff was you would get these six second videos. They're really awesome. I mean, six seconds isn't a long time, but it also means it's not enough time to get bored. Right, if you watch a vine that's a bad vine, don't worry, it's over in six seconds and you can watch something else.

And the really good ones made you appreciate how much work must have gone in to making just those six seconds of entertainment. Now, creating a good vine took imagination, it took skill, at least took some sort of demonstrable talent on screen. There were some arguably very dumb videos that became viral on Vine. Does anyone out there remember the series of vines featuring comedian Will Sasso inexplicably spitting

up whole lemons. There was an entire string of them, so a lot of ones that hit it big showed incredible ingenuity. I don't know if the limit thing showed ingenuity, It certainly showed absurdity, and I will admit that at the time I thought they were hilarious. I actually rewatched them in preparation for this episode, and as I rewatched them, I thought boy passed Jonathan had a difference it's of humor than current Jonathan does. Under Twitter's ownership, Vine got

some new features, so over to time the app evolved. Uh. For example, eventually creators were able to put their content into different categories so that it was easier to discover their work. So instead of it just being a catch all where you go to Vine and like all the vines you're seeing are just random videos, you could explore

specific subcategories, so stuff like comedy. You know, all the would be SNL writers could file their vines and comedy, all the editing geniuses can make crazy effects and put their work under the category of art and experimental that kind of thing. They also had dedicated categories for things like cats and then dogs, which I appreciate because you know, if you're a if you're a dog person, you might be just tired of all the cat videos online. You

just want to go straight to the puppies. Another big update was the long awaited support for front facing cameras that made it far easier to create selfie style videos, so that did emerge Under Twitter's ownership of Vine. Twitter also introduced a retweet like feature, in fact, it was called revine, where users could post vines that they loved to their own feeds and help boost the signal. They could even post it to other platforms. At one point.

Vine also introduced a web based version, so you didn't have to just use your smartphone too, you know, search all the vines and watch them. You could actually do it from your desktop computer. It also introduced a counter that would register every single loop of a video, so it was a loop counter, and that definitely helped with engagement too, because I don't know about you, but if I see that there's a video that has a huge number of views under it, and I'm already kind of

interested in the topic. I'm more likely to click on the video because the implication there is this video is one that's worth watching. Look at how many people have seen it. Now we all know that that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes you watch one of those videos you think, while this was garbage, but you know it's it's kind of a natural inclination. You see something that's popular, you get curious about it, so you check it out for yourself.

At its height, Vine saw two hundred million monthly active users. It was a rousing success from that perspective, with brands and celebrities jumping onto Vine in order to take advantage of the apps reach, because obviously, anytime we have any kind of communication tool that ends up being remotely successful, you typically see people try and take advantage of it in order to extend their own brand, whether that's a

company or a celebrity. I did not, despite the fact that I arguably have a brand, something that's difficult for me to reconcile on a day to day basis, I never got into Vine. I mean I watched them, but I never created them, uh, which probably explain pans my limited reach anyway, it was also making brand new celebrities.

Not only were celebrities making use of Vine, Vine was creating celebrities itself, like the Paul Brothers and a lot of popular Vine creators went on to create even bigger success in other venues from music to Twitch, to YouTube, etcetera. As Vine was launching on Android, Facebook, the company, so we would call it meta today, was doing what Facebook

does best. And by that I mean the company is famous for either acquiring any competition out there that could potentially pull eyeballs away from Facebook products, or it launches its own version of whatever the popular thing is in an attempt to grab some of those eyeballs. So in this case, Facebook, in the form of Instagram, introduced a way to record short videos and then share them through Instagram. So this became uh kind of a competitor to Vine.

In fact, a lot of people called it out as a blatantly obvious attempt of Facebook trying to get in on Vine's game. Now, this spurred of back and forth kind of tug of war between Twitter slash Vine and Facebook slash Instagram. Instagram initially allowed users to record videos that were up to fifteen seconds long, so more than twice the length of Vine. A little bit later, Instagram increase that to a full sixty seconds, so you could

record an entire minute of video. Twitter slash Vine responded by allowing a certain subset of creators, like some of the more popular creators on the platform, to record videos

that were up to one hundred forty seconds long. And you might say, well, that seems like an arbitrary number of seconds, but then you need to remember that at at that time, back in those days, Twitter had a strict character limit of one forty This was before Twitter stended that to to eight, so you can only post Twitter messages that were up to a hundred forty characters long. So it was kind of consistent, right, a hundred forty characters videos could be a hundred forty seconds cute. Another

competitor to Vine at this time was Snapchat. Snapchat had actually launched before Hoffman, Yusupov, and Kroll got the idea for Vine, so that had already been out. But Snapchat started as a a photo sharing app where the photos would disappear after a certain amount of time, and Snapchat then introduced the ability to take videos of up to ten seconds in length towards the end of two thousand twelve,

so still before Vine even launched. By two thousand fifteen, Snapchat was adding other features to its video creation tools to set it apart from Instagram and Vine, which created more competition in the space. And I think there were two major factors that ultimately doomed Vine. One was that while Twitter added some features to the app, the company never really put full support behind Vine. They never made it a leader in the video sharing space once competition

began to ramp up. You know, they enjoyed the number one spot briefly, but they didn't do anything to hold onto that, or they didn't do enough. I guess they did do stuff, they just didn't do enough. But another reason that it was doomed was because of something Twitter had been struggling with since, which was finding an effective

way to monetize the product. Creators were starting to migrate to other platforms, with some of them going to YouTube where they could create longer videos and see direct benefits from monetization. You know, Vine, the best way of of really profiting from it was to leverage your popularity to make money in some secondary way. You know, maybe you

get a sponsorship deal. Maybe someone discovers you, but you're not really making money from Vine itself, and in late two thousand sixteen, Twitter announced it would be shutting down Vine in the coming months. Initially, Twitter would keep vines available for people to search and to watch, but the ability to upload new content would go away. Twitter did attempt to resuscitate Vine in two thousand seventeen by integrating

the features of Vine into Twitter. The company launched a new app called Vine Camera, which would allow users to create Vine style videos, but there was no longer a Vine app that you would use to share those videos too, so instead you essentially had two options. You could either keep your videos on your your Vine cameras camera roll, where I guess you could enjoy it yourself whenever you liked, or you could share your new Vine style video on Twitter.

The Vine community died out pretty quickly. Creators had already started to move to other platforms, and Twitter's lackluster support really meant that there wasn't much there there. Twitter did allow folks to continue to access an archive of Vine videos until two thousand nineteen, and at that point Twitter even shut down the archive, and Vine itself was dead. There's some vines that that live on because people downloaded them and then shared them to YouTube, but otherwise they're

lost to the the mists of time. We're gonna take another quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about what happened with the Vine co founders, as well as a little bit about Twitter's plan to bring Vine back. But first let's take a break. Okay, let's have a quick rundown on what happened to vines three co founders. And before I get into it, I do want to give a trigger warning couple of them. Actually this story includes tragedy. I will warn you again when I get there.

I'll save that for the third of the three co founders. So first up is Dom Hoffman. Initially, he served as the lead general manager for Vine while he was at Twitter, but he made the decision to leave Twitter in two thousand fourteen to go and work on another startup. For several years, he teased something that he was calling v two and in he announced Bite b y t E, which was a short form video app that would let

folks create, edit, and share short, looped videos. Sounds familiar, I bet Bite went into a closed beta in two thousand eighteen, it became an official app both on Google and uh an Apple. At this point, whendows Phone was bye bye in early a year later. In fact, almost exactly a year after the app launched on Apple and Google, another short form video app company called Clash acquired Bite.

Very curious about that. I didn't find a whole lot of information about that because it didn't dig too deeply into this part. But I do want to follow up on that because I wonder what Dom Hoffman's thought process was, because he had already gone through this before, where he had sold Vine to Twitter, now Bite to Clash. Clash and Bite would ultimately merge together. Initially it was an app that was still called Clash, but later it got

rebranded into one called Huddles. Next up, we have russ Yusupov. I think I might have said us of prov previously. There is no r in his last name up, So if I did do that, which I suspect I did, my apologies. When Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine, Yusupov famously tweeted, don't sell your company, which that was the person who expressed regret that I alluded to earlier in this episode. Now at that point, Usupov had already

left Twitter himself. In late two thousand fifteen, Recode reported that Yusupov was fired as part of widespread layoffs. So it wasn't like he was fired for any specific reason, but rather Twitter was downsizing and he was part of that. But he then went on to co found a company called Intermedia Labs. This company would launch an app called h Q Trivia in the summer of two thousand seventeen. I feel like I could do a full episode on

HQ Trivia because whole golly that story. If you're unfa emilier with HQ Trivia, the way it worked was this, you would use an app to tune into a live trivia broadcast, so it was happening in real time. You would join a crowd of however many other players as you try and answer increasingly difficult trivia questions. I think there were twelve per game, and if you made it all the way through, then you got a share of

the cash prize for that contest. How much you got depended upon not just the purse for the game, but how many other people made it all the way through, right, because he would just divide it up at that point in early HQ Trivia shut down. This was in February of investors refused to pour more money into it, and without the money then there was no way to continue

supporting it, so it temporarily went down. The app had seen a huge spike in popularity early on when it launched in two thousand seventeen, but even a year later that had dropped significantly. The viralty had worn out, it had dropped and then plateaued to a much smaller user base, and Yusupov was ultimately able to bring the game back online in a slightly different incarnation after securing another deal, but it's not really the same experience as it once

was now. Within that time frame of Yusupov leaving Twitter, found co founding this company, the launch of HQ Trivia, it's subsequent shutting down and then relaunch, there was scandal and a tragedy that we have to talk about that involves the third vine, co founder, Colin Crawl, And this is the bit that has the trigger warnings associated with it, a couple of them. They relate to sexual harassment and the issue of drug overdose. So if you don't want

to hear any right totally understand. I just want to give that trigger warning out before we get into it now. Unlike Hoffman and Yusupov, or possibly Yusupov, Kroll didn't leave Twitter on his own terms. It's possible that Yusupov also was laid off. Recode reported that, but other reports say Yusupov chose to leave Twitter once it became clear that Vine was not going to get the support he felt it needed. Either way, Kroll definitely did not leave Twitter

by choice. According to multiple news outlets, he was fired from Twitter. Why was he fired, Well, the main reason, according to all these sources is that he was just bad at his job. He had a bad management style, so however he was managing people, was rubbing everyone the wrong way. But on top of that, there were multiple reports that he was making women at Twitter very uneasy, that he was being creepy and creating a hostile work environment.

A lot of the language points at him engaging in various forms of sexual harassment, although nothing goes so far as to say that outright, at least nothing that I came across, you know, maybe like third hand reports kind of go there. But the stuff I saw that was reporting directly upon his his leaving of Twitter. And you know how this came up because it came up during due diligence when companies investors were looking into intermediate labs.

That's where you start seeing these reports that he made women uneasy. So again, at the very least, he made a hostile work environment, and it was bad enough for Twitter to give him his walking papers in two thousand and fourteen. Again, whether that was because of the harassment issue or if it was over because of bad management, I don't know, Like what the the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, I don't know what that was. I will say it's pretty rare to read

about companies firing people for being bad managers. In Silicon Valley. There are plenty of bad managers out there, and you don't hear about most of them getting fired. So this was kind of an outlier. But Krall went on to co found Intermedia Labs with russ Yusupov, so the two of them made the company together. So he was also

involved with this company that launched HQ Trivia. In two thousand eighteen, Kroll and Yusupov got into a really nasty battle for control of the company, Yusupov had been CEO, and Kroll had reached a point where he was in disagreement with the way Yusupov was was running the company.

HQ Trivia had already started to come down from its viral hit from the year before, so again in ten the was a very different picture than so things were uncertain and the two co founders disagreed on the direction that the company should take, and specifically on what to do about HQ Trivia. Kroll then reportedly found a sympathetic board member, and with that board member they were able to force Yusupov to resign as CEO and Kroll took his place. So now Colin Kroll became CEO of Intermedia Labs.

An employee had actually filed a complaint against Kroll before he became CEO, calling his management style aggressive, So this didn't relate to, you know, sexual harassment claims, but it did say that Kroll was not a good manager, which again was what we had heard when he left Twitter. But despite that hr filed report, the board approved Colin

Crawl to move into the CEO position. This was September two, eighteen three months later, he be dead on December seventeen, two thousand eighteen, news outlets reported that police had found Colin Kroll unresponsive and dead inside his New York apartment when they were called in to do a wellness check on him. Found in his apartment was an envelope containing white powder, which obviously led to suspicions that Kroll had

died from an overdose. Those suspicions were later confirmed when the medical examiner revealed that traces of heroin, cocaine, and fetnel were found in his system, among other things. In the wake of Kroll's death, Yusupov came back to Intermedia Labs and was reinstated as CEO. That whole story is quite dramatic and will be part of a documentary that I believe is slated to come out next year. So we should see a whole documentary about HQ Trivia, I think,

is the way they're they're framing it. So they're probably looking at, you know, how successful it was upon launch. This really dramatic turn as two co founders turn against each other, the subsequent tragic death of one of them, and then the slow, agonizing fading of the of the game over the following two years, so that's what's happened

with Vine's co founders. As for Vine itself, Musk does seem interested in bringing it back, and in a world that already has TikTok in it as well as Snapchat, Instagram, Reel's YouTube shorts. I really wonder if Vine could make a comeback and carve out a place of its own. I suspect the move is one of those that's seen as necessary because of Twitter wants to attract more users to the platform. It's got to do something in order to make that happen. If we're to believe the numerous

people who have said that they're leaving Twitter. Now that Musk is in charge, the platform is going to require all the help it can get. For the record, I suspect that a ton of people who talk about leaving are not actually going to leave, a significant fewer number will actually leave the platform, But we'll have to wait and see. As for myself, I am very rarely on Twitter. I'm mostly just there to check the tech stuff hs w handle to see if you've reached out, to give

me suggestions for future topics of episodes. And that's how we end this episode, reminding you that if you do want me to talk about something specific, One way is to send me a message on Twitter. So if you're on Twitter, if you're still there, if you haven't walked away, then you can send a message to tech Stuff HSW That's how you can get in touch with me. The other way to get in touch is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download and use.

You can navigate over to tech Stuff by putting tech Stuff in the search field. It will pop on over to the podcast page and there you'll see a little microphone. If you click on that microphone, you can record a message up to thirty seconds in length. Let me know what you would like me to talk about in the future. You can also let me know if you would like me to include your message in a future episode. I do not do that by default. I will only do

it if you tell me it's okay. So if you would rather not have your voice heard on a future podcast, that's totally fine. Just you know, don't tell me I can use it and I won't. That's it. I hope you are all well, and I hope you enjoyed this look back on Vine and influential Flash in the Pan app that may see it returns in the near future, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff

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