In our Twitter report yesterday, we noted that new owner Elon Musk had tweeted a poll asking ‘Bring back Vine?’ – referring to Twitter’s long-shuttered short-video spin-off.
It seems he may not have been joking. “Elon Musk has instructed Twitter engineers to work on a Vine reboot that could be ready by year end,” reported tech-news site Axios yesterday.
“Twitter engineers already have been assigned to look at Vine’s old code base, which hasn’t been changed or updated since the shutdown.”
That shutdown was in 2016, so there’d be a lot of work to do.
While Vine was a genuine pioneer of the short-video format, think of the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars of R&D and marketing that have gone into newer platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and the catching up that would be needed to revive Vine as a competitor.
As Musk himself tweeted in a conversation with influencer MrBeast: “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?” What indeed?
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: We Are Giant
With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…