Elon Musk might resurrect Vine from the social media graveyard
Before TikTok became the go-to short-form video app, there was a time when Vine and Musical.ly dominated the scene. Both of these apps were widely used and popularized the type of content that is now on TikTok, the app owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Now, Elon Musk wants to bring back Vine from the dead.
Since closing his deal with Twitter and taking the company private, Musk has made several changes, including firing several top Twitter executives. He has also teased the possibility of bringing different features to the app – with the latest being Vine.
Also: Elon Musk promises not to make Twitter a 'free-for-all hellscape'
On Sunday, Musk tweeted a poll that asked his followers whether or not he should bring back Vine. As of Tuesday, the poll had 4,920,155 votes, with nearly 70% of people wanting the app to make a reappearance.
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Vine let users share six-second, looping video clips. Twitter acquired it in 2012 but shuttered it in 2016 after it fell behind other social media apps (perhaps in part because of Facebook's attempt to kneecap the app's growth).
Musk has dropped hints on what a potential Vine-like app would look like through interactions with users on the tweet's thread.
Mr. Beast – a YouTube and TikTok creator with more than 100 million followers – tweeted that if this new Vine app competed with TikTok, "that'd be hilarious." Musk responded by asking what could make this new app better than TikTok, serving as a sort of confirmation that Musk's intentions are to rival TikTok.
What could we do to make it better than TikTok?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Musk also took the time to respond to someone's suggestion that the new video platform might be incorporated into the actual Twitter app with the 💯 emoji.
Video shouldn’t be a separate app tho. Make sure it’s within twitter.
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 31, 2022
Musk's sudden interest in video platforms could be part of his plans to grow the app's user base. A Vine/TikTok inspired short-form video platform could be a great way to grow Twitter, given their proven popularity.
TikTok has a billion active users, making it one of the biggest social media apps at the moment. When Vine was at its peak, it had nearly 100 million users.