After years of missing revenue expectations, Twitter said it will shut down short-video app Vine as part of a broader downsizing plan.
The mobile app that made six-second looping clips famous will go offline in the coming months, according to a post on Vine’s Medium page. No firm date was given. Users will get updates along the way, and the website is expected to stay up for a while after the app disappears so older vines can still be watched.
Vine launched four years ago and recently tried a revenue-sharing model for popular creators on Twitter, but the company never shared hard numbers on how Vine performed. Twitter is not spelling out the closure rationale either. Still, it is fair to say that when the microblogging network cut about 9% of staff after weak growth and monetization, Vine, which was not adding new subscribers, became an easy cut.
Twitter bought Vine just before its 2012 public launch. The app once claimed around 200 million active users in its early boom years, then lost ground to Snapchat and Instagram. Twitter itself shifted attention from short clips toward live video and Periscope.
In this round of cuts, Twitter is expected to lay off close to 300 people, including many of Vine’s staff.
