Social media platform Twitter was bought by Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk last week in a highly anticipated $44 billion acquisition. Musk has plans to change the platform, which could involve reviving an old company.
What Happened: Among the early plans for Twitter from Musk are to charge $8 a month to become a verified user (including several features), and to bring back short-form content company Vine.
Twitter acquired Vine, which featured six-second videos by users, for $30 million in 2012. The social media company shut down the feature four years later.
Musk now has plans to bring back Vine, which is getting support from many people. Entrepreneur Gary Vee (aka Gary Vaynerchuk) is among those that have praised the Vine news.
“This actually makes a lot of sense for a lot of you that are of the age that you remember Vine,” Vee said in a video posted on Twitter.
Vee said Vine was the app that started the movement of short-form content creation.
“Before Vine it was a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram world and Instagram was photos at that time.”
Vee said when Vine was around it wasn’t a creator economy yet and companies like Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL owned YouTube were focused on long-form content.
“Vine’s DNA is really the DNA of what is the modern social network game.”
Vee also said that a re-launch of Vine could be coming at a perfect time.
“Entertainment's about to become more important. Entertainment explodes as a value during times of tension and economic struggles if you look at the Great Depression and other times.”
Vee said adding Vine back into the Twitter ecosystem could be a “viable play.”
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Why It’s Important: Vee’s reference to Facebook and Instagram, which are both owned by Meta Platforms META, comes at a time when those platforms have introduced short-form video content to compete with the likes of TikTok.
TikTok has dominated the short-form content market and is incredibly popular with a younger audience of social media users. Some of these social media users might not have ever used or experienced Vine.
Musk is hoping to have Vine relaunched by the end of the year. One key question will be what the limit on time for Vine will be. The old platform capitalized on six-second videos, but many platforms now allow longer times, with TikTok expanding its time limits from 15 seconds to 60 seconds up to 3 minutes to 10 minutes over the years.
At its peak, Vine had more than 200 million active users worldwide.
The same comments from Mr. Beast that caught Vee’s attention also got the attention of Musk, who asked for feedback from one of the most followed YouTubers.
“What could we do to make it better than TikTok?” Musk asked Mr. Beast.
Mr. Beast suggested that Vine should stand out from the competition and have features that are hard to copy.
While Mr. Beast thinks Vine needs something unique to get users, Vee said there is room for many in the crowded field.
When asked by a Twitter user if there’s such a thing as too much short-form video content, Vee had a reply that could support Vine entering the crowded field.
“Nope still lots of consumption ‘need states,’” Vee said.
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Photo: Courtesy of shutterstock.com
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