Vine made a splash in 2013, as the novelty of creating seven-second videos enthralled a surprising number of people and created an entirely new class of social media stars. But, apparently, that wasn’t enough, and Vine is shutting down.
The news was announced via Medium and it won’t be immediate. However, the mobile app is being discontinued, and as that’s more or less how Vine accumulates new clips, it’s effectively the end of the service.
Vine, as goofy as it could sometimes be, definitely had an influence on pop culture. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “on fleek,” for example, it came from Vine:
The site was arguably perfect for capturing tiny, funny moments, and it’s largely served as a comedy site since its inception. It was also a powerful tool for musicians to share short clips and to reach out well beyond the usual audience, and losing the service might be a problem for some parts of the indie music scene.
That, in turn, raises the question of what’s next. It’s not particularly clear what will be happening to the service or its videos. It seems likely that Vine will be folded, at least to some degree, into Twitter’s larger functions. But that will likely be of little use to those who’ve built a large following on the service, and were hoping to parlay that into larger success. One hopes, though, that Vine manages to preserve its enormous archive of video and other moments. If for no other reason that we want to keep our favorites around. Below, you’ll find some of the Uproxx staff’s favorite Vines, and share yours in the comments.
And finally the two greatest Vines ever made, the Duck Army:
And this llama:
Trot on, DMX Llama. Trot on.
