Twitter is shutting down its Vine video service: The company will discontinue the Vine mobile app in the coming months, it has announced in a blog post.
The Vine website will stay up and running, and the company said on Thursday that it was going to wind down Vine slowly:
"We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You'll be able to access and download your Vines. We'll be keeping the website online because we think it's important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website."
The announcement comes after Twitter announced across-the-board job cuts, with plans to lay off 9 per cent of its workforce, which equals about 350 people. The company also said in a letter to shareholders that it was going to prioritise some parts of its business, while deprioritising others. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on how many Vine team members are going to get laid off.
Twitter launched Vine in 2012 as a way to share short, six-second video clips. Initially envisioned as a social video sharing service, Vine quickly attracted a new generation of creators looking to reach an audience with short, pointed stand-up comedy.
But while Vine was popular with some creators and their followers, it also faced some stiff competition from Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, each of which grew a lot faster than Vine did. The lack of monetisation options also led some of its most prolific creators to flee the platform.
Twitter finally announced Vine monetisation in June, and also introduced a way for Vine creators to upload longer videos to the platform. Some of this suggested that Twitter was aligning Vine more closely with its core service, but Vine GM Hannah Donovan told Variety at the that Vine wasn't going to go away. "Vine has a really strong brand, and Vine will always be Vine," she said.
