Vine Walked so TikTok Could Run

Vine was a social media platform made of six-second looping videos that was born in 2012 and during this time I was in 7th grade and just starting to use social media platforms such as Facebook. It introduced the world to many new creators and sayings that are still quoted by people today. Vine introduced the short video platform to the world, and today TikTok thrives off of this platform. Vine, like TikTok, was an app a user could get lost in the scrolling and be there for hours.

Vine was founded in 2012 then sold to Twitter for $30 million. It was then released in early 2013 and once it was made as a downloadable app for smartphones it became an overnight success. At this point, Vine had become the most downloaded app and had over 200 million users. Vine was popular with the younger generation, most of its users were in their early to late teens. I was in middle school when Vine was initially released and I remember how instantly popular it became, my friends and I would quote our favorite vines all day at school.

Vine app logo

Many creators on vine gained immense popularity quickly and were able to build a fanbase, similar to many content creators on TikTok today. Some of these creators are Liza Koshy and Thomas Sanders, the TikTok creator equivalent would be Charli Damelio. An issue that arose between Vine and its popular creators was that they did not know how to properly compensate these creators in the way TikTok does today with the TikTok creator fund. Vine creators were able to make money from ads, but companies did not see results from that route so they went to other social media platforms for their ads. Once these creators were not being contacted about doing ads they were no longer making money through vine. This is a possible reason as to why many of these creators slowly left the vine platform and went to other platforms such as YouTube, former Vine creator Liza Koshy was able to do just that and bring her following with her.

Liza Koshy Vine content from Vine user

Today the popular social media app TikTok has been compared to Vine, it has even been called Vine’s replacement. They seem to be very similar platforms; both support the short video concept, but TikTok has more features than Vine did. TikTok is always giving its creators new creation tools to use and a chance to bounce content off of another creators video, such as duets and stitches, where as Vine creators were not given as many options. Another think TikTok did was have a creator fund. The TikTok creator fund is an amount of money TikTok puts aside to give back to its creators based on their original content and interactions they receive. This resolves the problem Vine had with properly compensating their creators, the idea of making a living by being a social media content creator started on Vine, but TikTok made it easier. There are other short video platforms, but they do not compare to the success that TikTok is today or the quick success Vine gained in the beginning. In TikTok’s early stages it had several Vine similarities, such as videos only going to a max of 30 seconds, but it has been able to grow and continue to stay relevant which is something Vine was unable to do.

TikTok vs Vine

Vine was one of the first apps to successfully introduce the short video social media platform to the world, but was unable to keep up with requests from its users. Today the popular short video platform TikTok has been called Vine’s replacement due to the similar concept. For the people that were avid Vine users, the popular Vine videos that made us all laugh back then will always live in our heads and will still make us laugh when we quote them with friends. Today TikTok continues to bring these short videos to us that still bring the joy that Vine videos brought before it.

References:

Herrman J. ( 2020, February 22) “Vine Changed the Internet Forever. How Much Does the Internet Miss It?” The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/style/byte-vine-short-video-apps.html

McDonald K. (2016, October 27) “The rise and fall of Vine, as short as its loops” iNews https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/rise-fall-vine-short-loops-27661

Rowell C. (2020, May 19) “The rise and fall of Vine: A brief timeline” The Business Chief https://businesschief.com/technology-and-ai/rise-and-fall-vine-brief-timeline-1

Lennon, M. (2020, March 10) “TikTok is better than Vine — and here’s why” The Chronicle https://chronicle.durhamcollege.ca/2020/03/tiktok-is-better-than-vine-and-heres-why/

Amanda. Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/504895808197994769/

Goodfellow, J. (2016, October 28) “Where Twitter went wrong with Vine” The Drum https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/10/28/where-twitter-went-wrong-with-vine

Balita-Centeno L. (2021, April 24) “What is the TikTok Creator Fund?” MUO https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-tiktok-creator-fund/