Vine

Vine was the short-form video platform that created the format TikTok would later turn into a $200+ billion business. Founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll (who later created HQ Trivia), Vine was acquired by Twitter for $30 million in October 2012 before it even launched. The app, which allowed users to create 6-second looping videos, launched in January 2013 and became a cultural phenomenon. Vine birthed a generation of internet celebrities — Logan Paul, Lele Pons, King Bach, Brittany Furlan — and introduced the concept of short-form mobile video content to mainstream culture. At its peak, Vine had 200 million monthly active users and its cultural influence was enormous. But Twitter, Vine's parent company, systematically neglected the platform. While Instagram launched 15-second videos in 2013 and Snapchat introduced Stories in 2013, Twitter failed to invest in Vine's features, monetization tools, or creator programs. The company had no way for creators to make money on the platform, leading to a mass exodus of top talent to Instagram and YouTube, which offered advertising revenue and brand partnerships. In a last-ditch effort in 2016, Vine's top creators reportedly approached Twitter with a proposal: they would each commit to posting original content if Twitter paid them $1.2 million each. Twitter declined. Within months, creators abandoned the platform entirely. In October 2016, Twitter announced Vine would be discontinued, and the app was finally shut down in January 2017. The platform that invented short-form video — and had a three-year head start — was killed by its parent company's neglect. When TikTok launched globally in 2018, it proved that the format Vine invented was worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Vine's death is perhaps the greatest 'what could have been' in tech history.

Why did Twitter shut down Vine?

Is Vine the same as TikTok?