After Twitter takeover: Elon Musk wants to revive Vine

Six years after its demise, the video app Vine is to be revived. Elon Musk has apparently commissioned Twitter developers to work on a new version of the app with the six-second videos. Deadline for completion: before the end of the year.

If Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his way, who took over the short message service Twitter last week for 44 billion US dollars, a new version of the video app Vine will be released this year. That reports axios citing several unspecified sources.

According to the report, Twitter developers have already been tasked with looking at the app’s legacy code base, which has remained untouched since Vine was discontinued in 2016. First findings: “There is still a lot of work to be done,” one of the sources is quoted as saying.

After four years on Twitter, Vine ended

The video app, known for its six-second clips, was acquired by Twitter in 2012. Four years later, the end followed due to falling user numbers. Twitter tried to resell the service, but to no avail.

Elon Musk was probably toying with the idea of ​​reviving Vine months before the Twitter takeover. On Monday he conducted a Twitter poll: The question of whether he should bring Vine back was approved by a good two-thirds majority.

Competition for TikTok?

Although Twitter also offers video capabilities, the revival of Vine would create new opportunities for content creators. The question of a possible competitor for TikTok quickly arises, also in the comments under Musk’s Twitter poll. Musk immediately picked this up and asked what could be done to make Vine better than TikTok.

Unlike TikTok, which suggests new videos to users based on an algorithm, Vine relied on its users’ followers. It remains to be seen what that would look like in a new edition.