Twitter Engineers Has Begun Working on a Vine Reboot at the Behest of Elon Musk

Remember Vine? It was a social network that was popular a few years ago for its short looping videos. Although Vine had influencers, marketing, and virality video content similar to TikTok, Twitter shut it down in 2016 after only four years.

Elon Musk wants to bring Vine back and has instructed Twitter engineers to begin working on a reboot that could be ready sometime in 2023. In a recent tweet, Elon Musk asked his followers whether they wanted Vine to make a comeback. Nearly 70% of people (4.9 million) voted that they did.

Vine was one of the first social networks to center around short videos and although it didn’t have TikTok’s success, it did pave the way for similar platforms. Twitter acquired Vine in 2012, but it was unable to keep up with competitors such as Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

While both TikTok and Vine utilize videos, a key difference lies in how each app functions. Specifically, TikTok runs off an algorithm while the 2016-era Vine was based on a user’s social media followings. AI is common today, but in 2016 it was less developed, and Twitter didn’t make Vine’s algorithm a priority. Elon knows this, and that’s one of the reasons he wants to bring Vine back better than ever.

Vine also didn’t have features that would allow creators to monetize their videos, so many users left the platform. Twitter shut Vine down in 2016, but its code base has been preserved so that Musk can bring it back relatively easily.

It is unclear what a resurrected Vine would look like given Twitter’s current focus on live-streaming and audio content. However, if Musk is successful in his endeavor, it would provide some competition for TikTok which has been facing increasing scrutiny from the US government.

It’s unclear what a Vine reboot would look like, but it could be Twitter’s answer to TikTok. Twitter has not announced any plans to bring back Vine officially, but if Elon Musk has anything to do with it, we may see Vine make a comeback in the near future. S

So, if you’re a fan of Vine (or even if you’ve never heard of it), keep your eyes peeled for a potential reboot in the near future!

Oh, and be the FIRST to go viral on Vine 2.0. 😉

Challenge accepted?