The Future for Viners
Twitter announced on October 27 that Vine, their six second
video platform, will soon be shutdown. I do not know anyone who is heartbroken
because of it, or even checked it regularly, but there were still many people
who launched careers as “Viners.” So what happens to these people now that
their platform is gone?
The factors that went into shutting down Vine are simple:
Twitter is struggling and Vine was the logical place to cut. Vine was never a
completely successful platform, it was too limited to reach the same popularity
as Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram. On top of that these competitors have
continually expanded and now include better video capability. In fact, according
to an article from recode.net, avid Viners expected it and started to move on a
while ago.
Brittany Furlan, once the most followed female on the platform
said “It’s really sad but honestly I
can’t say that I didn’t see it coming…Vine was like an old friend that was on
life support for a really long time and Twitter finally pulled the plug on it.”
She has also shared frustration about the lack of compensation to popular
Viners for the amount of traffic they brought. She said she had not posted a
Vine in months, mostly because the company never contacted her and she had no
opportunity to make a career there. She now posts most of her content on Instagram.
Most Viners have had accounts on
other platforms since they started even if it was originally just to promote their
Vine page. Over the past several months many of them started solely using their
Vine account to promote another platform such as YouTube, Facebook or
Instagram. So if you followed someone specific make sure you check their other
accounts out to see where they are posting. All of the content currently on
Vine will be kept up, but soon no one will be able to post anything new. Rest
in peace Vine, you had a good three years.
Vine seemed to explode over night a few years back, but I don't remember the hype going much longer than a few months. It died off relatively quick, so i'm not too surprised that it finally shut down. At least we have instagram and YouTube to keep making funny, short videos.
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