Vines…What Are Those?
In 2019, people spent over 2 hours on social media every day (Cooper, 2020). Can you imagine if that time was only spent on Vine? It would be equivalent to watching 1200 Vine videos. Unfortunately, Vine was closed by Twitter in 2016 due to competition and lack of profits. However, from 2013 to 2015, there was nothing like Vine on the internet. According to an article in The Atlantic, “you could get lost in Vine like it was Wikipedia, and you could laugh on Vine like it was YouTube” (Meyer, 2016, para. 5). Vine provided one of the most animated and creative outlets of culture on the internet.
Videos were composed solely of six-second looping videos. In 2013, Vine was the first mobile service to make uploading a video easy. By setting a time limit on length, Vine allowed the video-making process to be fun and simple (Feldman, 2016). It was the perfect platform for teens and young adults with a newly possessed smartphone. All they needed was a web connection, a video camera, and a link to an extensive library of pop culture. It combined the old internet’s spontaneity and randomness to the new social media world (Meyer, 2016). Vine was art. It could show you anything, but it was always six seconds. Each Vine had a unique format. Some videos had a clear beginning, middle, and end. Some videos left you with a sudden twist on the joke. But no matter what was happening, you were always back where you began.
I choose Vine because it was silly, random, and just plain fun. In recent times, social media has been flooded with heavy topics including a pandemic, social injustice, and cancel culture. A Global Web Index reported that over 80% of consumers in the U.S. and UK have consumed more content since the coronavirus outbreak (Jones, 2020). During this pandemic, many people are looking for ways to have a positive mindset. It would have been amusing to see what kind of entertainment Vine produced during this pandemic. I believe Vine was a wonderful six-second loop of distraction from reality. Simply put, there wasn’t time to be hateful or negative. According to an article in Intelligencer, Vine’s purpose “was to have dumb, stupid free play on an internet increasingly hostile to that kind of freedom, whether because of surveillance or heavy-handed advertiser presence or trolls” (Feldman, 2016, para 4). I found myself watching old Vine videos as part of my research. It brought back silly and lighthearted memories.
Vine’s impact on digital history can be seen in many social media platforms. When Vine debuted in 2013, Instagram and Twitter didn’t have video yet. And Facebook was still largely text-focused. An article written in the Intelligencer, suggests “the exuberant video-centric culture that you see online today is directly attributable to Vine” (Feldman, 2016, para 7). It’s no accident that Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are now setting their sights on easy-playing video features.
The biggest impact can be seen in TikTok. As Vine was shutting down, TikTok was being created (Cahue, 2019). In 2019, TikTok was the most downloaded app on the App store with more than 33 million installs (“The evolution of social”, 2020). TikTok exploits on Vine nostalgia and comes at a time when people are more online than ever (Cahue, 2019). Similar to Vine, anybody with a smartphone and video idea can download the app and create whatever they want. However, TikTok differs in Vine by allowing longer videos to be created. The flexible time translates to marketable opportunities for companies (Cahue, 2019). Plus, TikTok offers a variety of options like music, sound effects, and filters. As social media technology advances, will TikTok be able to keep up with its popularity and followers? Only time will tell.
References:
Cahue, Joey. (2019, October 21). Vine walked so TikTok could run. The DePaulia. depauliaonline.com/43570/artslife/vine-walked-so-tiktok-could-run/
Cooper, Paige. (2020, February 20). 140+ Social Media Statistics that Matter to Marketers in 2020. Hootsuite. blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-statistics-for-social-media-managers/
Feldman, Brian. (2016, October 27). The Dealth of Vine Makes the Internet a Worse Place. Intelligencer. nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/10/the-death-of-vine-makes-the-internet-a-worse-place.html#_ga=2.159661629.1095851196.1599181513-459505373.1599181513
Goodfellow, Jessica. (2016, October 28). Where Twitter went wrong with Vine. The Drum. www.thedrum.com/news/2016/10/28/where-twitter-went-wrong-with-vine
Jones, Katie. (2020, April 7). How COVID-19 Has Impacted Media Consumption, by Generation. Visual Capitalist. www.visualcapitalist.com/media-consumption-covid-19/
Meyer, Robinson. (2016, October 27). Whither Vine? The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/vine-was-too-good-for-us/505622/
The evolution of social media. (2020, February 28). Vamp. https://vamp-brands.com/blog/2020/02/28/evolution-of-social-media/