Why Vine Died

Vine was a hosting service for posting short videos. The videos could only be 6 seconds long and would repeat on a loop over and over. This short format pushed people to be innovative and make creative videos that worked well with the short time-span and repetition. These days, short videos are a powerful form of content that really draws in viewers and engages your audience. Let's take a look at why Vine died, since it was a service that provided an easy way to create short videos.

Beginning of Vine

Vine was founded in June 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. Its short format quickly drew the interest of Twitter, the social networking service that’s known for its short, 140-character posts. Twitter bought Vine in October 2012 for around $30 million. The service was officially launched as a free IOS app on January 24, 2013.

The creators of Vine envisioned the service as an easy way to share short, casual life moments with friends and family members. However, people found another use for their videos pretty much from day one. Many people took Vine’s 6 second limitation as a challenge for creativity, humor, and visual art. The original beta only had about a dozen people, and even those few people started to immediately use Vine imaginatively.

The creators have said that almost immediately after launch, it became clear that Vine wasn’t being used as a day-to-day platform for sharing daily moments. “Watching the community and the tool push on each other was exciting and unreal, and almost immediately it became clear that Vine’s culture was going to shift towards creativity and experimentation,” said Hofmann in an interview with The Verge.

Rising Popularity and Famous Vines

Vine only existed on its own for a few short months before joining Twitter. Ian Padgham, part of Twitter’s marketing team at the time, saw the creative potential of Vine immediately. He made many videos using Vine both as promotional content and for pure enjoyment. His first Vine was a simple view of the street outside Twitter headquarters. Padgham loved the 6-second limit, because it made you think more about your content. “It’s kind of like drawing in Microsoft Paint,” he said, “you couldn’t get distracted by the bells and whistles.”

Padgham’s Vines became pretty popular. One of his most famous creations is a tribute to early photographer and filmmaker Eadweard Muybridge. This short video took him several hours and 300 pictures to create. His time-lapse Vine that shows his fingers traveling around and manipulating Big Ben has been viewed 6 million times. 6 months after Vine was released, Padgham actually got enough offers from big brand companies like Sony to make him feel comfortable enough to quit his job at Twitter to pursue a career of Vine marketing.

In 2013, Twitter updated the Vine app to allow users to record their videos using their front-facing phone cameras. This change made Vine’s popularity explode, and many Vine stars arose from the masses. Magician Zach King became famous for his amazing tricks. Definitely check them out if you haven’t! Amanda Cerny became famous for her fun Vines that featured a lot of physical comedy. Logan Paul even turned his Vine popularity into an acting career.

Instagram and Snapchat: The Beginning of the End

Vine’s popularity peaked by 2014. Twitter didn’t release specific statistics, but once claimed to have an audience of 200 million. The humor became increasingly self-referential, and many memes came from Vine’s short videos. However, the beginning of the end for Vine had already begun in June 2013, when Facebook released the ability to post videos with Instagram. Not only did Instagram provide a similar service to Vine, but that company moved faster to respond to its audience and provide more innovations.

Instagram appealed to a wider audience than Vine. It permitted up to 15 seconds of video, allowing for over twice the amount of content within a single post. This was later extended to 60 seconds. Instagram also promoted its celebrity accounts with an “explore” option that allowed viewers to find new content easily. Marketers and celebrities quickly moved away from Vine into Instagram, which remains a powerhouse of social media to this day.

Another big draw that pulled users away from Vine was Snapchat. This service allows users to create and post 10-second videos. Through its design and marketing, Snapchat managed to secure the niche of users casually posting about their daily lives that the creators of Vine intended to fill. By May of 2016, reports indicated that Vine users were sharing fewer and fewer new posts, and many were leaving for other services.

Management Problems

Another problem Vine faced was a constant turnover in upper management. Hofmann had quit back in 2014, shortly followed by Kroll. Yusupov was eventually fired by Twitter. In response, he ironically Tweeted “Don’t sell your company!” on Twitter. Jason Toff took over Vine between 2014 and 2016. Hannah Donnovan followed after that beginning in March 2016, but she had no real experience running a company.

This kind of overturn in the company’s leadership most likely contributed to Vine’s inability to make money. Vine’s creators resisted most monetization strategies from the start, and the company never got on the same page as Instagram and Snapchat for cutting deals with celebrities and promoting accounts. There were eventually talks of combining Vine’s services within the default Twitter app. However, this never came to pass. By July 2016, most of Vine’s top executives had already jumped ship.

The End

In December 2016, Twitter officially announced that Vine would be shut down, and that Twitter users could instead post videos of any size directly to Twitter. In January 2017, a “Vine Camera” app was released that allows users to record and post videos on Twitter, but the app suffers from bad reviews. They also announced that preexisting Vines would remain online to view in an archive.

Ankur Thakkar, Vine’s head of editorial, explained the downfall of the company: “A couple of things plagued Vine, and it all stems from the same thing, which is a lack of unity and leadership on a vision.” Many of the stars continued to work on other platforms, but none of them have quite the same feel of the 6-second repeating loop that spurred such interesting innovation.

So how should we answer the question of why Vine died? The short answer is an inability to compete by providing new features for its users, leading to a dwindling user-base. The company also suffered from a revolving door of top executives who were never prepared to properly monetize the company.

If you want to see more information about SEO, website development, social media news, and more, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

Improve your Copy with these Copywriting Exercises

Our previous VMA blog defined copywriting and discussed what makes good copy. As a refresher, good copy will engage your audience and provide something valuable to make people want to buy your product or use your services. In addition to starting a conversation with your customers, good copy also needs to take web design and SEO into account in order to thrive in modern-age business.

The next question is:

How do I get better at writing copy?

Let’s go over some useful copywriting exercises to help you improve your copy and make you more comfortable with writing and creating as a whole. Practice makes perfect, so let’s go over some things you can do to develop your copywriting skills.

Re-Write Ads

Advertisements are everywhere. We’re bombarded with them constantly. As you interact with the world every day, pay close attention to the ads around you and try to re-write them. Can you figure out a way to make people crave that restaurant’s food even more with a better billboard slogan? Is there any way to improve that Google AdWord advertisement that came up on your last search?

Don’t worry about the quality of your fake re-written ads. The important thing is to constantly practice using different styles and methods to promote an idea or product.

Make a Swipe File

If you have a job that requires you to constantly produce new content, keeping a swipe file is a must. A swipe file is a collection of advertisements and copy that left a mark on you in some way. Even if it has nothing to do with your field, you can put content in your swipe file for any reason: great visual design, a clever turn of phrase, or even a cool font that you want to use later. Make sure to save anything that makes you click on a link, laugh, or even just pause for a closer look.

A swipe file can be either a physical file or digital file. You can even have one on your phone, which is a great way to keep up with mobile-responsive innovations. Screenshots are a great tool for easily saving digital copies. If you have a Mac, you can press command-shift-4, then drag a box around the desired image. By default, this saves the screenshot to your desktop, where you can drag it into your swipe file.

If you have a Windows PC, it gets a bit more complicated. Here’s an overview of several different ways to take screenshots in Windows. If you have Windows 10, by default one of the easier ways to take a screenshot is to press Windows-PrintScreen (usually abbreviated to something like PrntScrn or PrtScn and located near F12). This will save an image of your entire screen to Screenshots under the default Pictures folder.

So what do you do with your expanding swipe file? Use it for inspiration! If you need to make something, browse your swipe file for ideas related to that project. Need a clean-but-interesting web layout? Want to find phrasing ideas for blog titles? Check your swipe file and see if anything that popped out at you in the past can help with your current problem.

Copy Copy

A simple exercise for improving your content is to copy other people’s copy. While you’re filling your swipe file with fun ideas, physically write down advertisements, slogans, and other forms of copy that you think are brilliant. Copy them word-for-word, so you can get a better feel for how the sentence is structured and what makes it sound and look good.

Highlight the Benefits

When you describe the features of your product or business, don’t simply list them. You also need to let your customers know the results of these features and how they will benefit them.

For example, a feature of WordPress is the ability to publish content such as pages and posts without using code. This is a great feature, but on the WordPress website, the copywriter further explains that anyone who has created a document on their computer is already prepared to write a post, format it, insert media, and publish “with the click of a button.” Not only does the paragraph describe the feature of WordPress, but it also explains in simple terms how this feature benefits the potential user.

Keep in mind that you are most likely much more informed on your business’ field than your customers. They want to know how they can use your features to benefit themselves and why they should use your company over another. Most of them won't be drawn to a jargon-heavy list of features.

Be Concise

There’s a reason why social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram are so huge. People love taglines. A short, concise phrase such as “just do it” or “I’m lovin’ it” sticks in your head much easier than a longer sentence would.

When creating your copy, try to trim down the content and get your point across with as few words as possible. By sending out information more efficiently, you will get your message across better. Whether it’s text, video, or audio, spread information with fewer words.

This doesn’t mean that all of your copy should be cut short. Long copy can spread a lot of information, draw people in, and sell well. Longwinded copy, on the other hand, drives people away before they finish listening.

Read Out Loud

One of the best things you can do to improve your copy right away is read it out loud. Not only does this help you weed out typos and grammatical errors, but it also helps you make your content sound more conversational. It’s much easier to make a sentence sound natural if you hear it as you read it. It will also help you avoid being as longwinded!

Read aloud to yourself, record your voice and listen to it, or even force someone else to listen to you. You’ll see instant results.

Learn More

Many jobs require you to keep up-to-date on the latest news, techniques, or trends. Working as a copywriter is no different, especially if your focus is online. A copywriter who is good at many things is always going to have an edge over one who is only good at one thing.

Get experience wherever you can. If you want to work as a freelancer, it’s best to start out in an established company for a few years. That way, you can learn how many aspects of the business works, and it’s not as easy to get stuck in a rut of your own repeating ideas.

Constantly search for more ways to learn something new or improve an old skill. Take classes, join a discussion, read a book…the possibilities for new information are endless, especially online!

Hopefully these tips help you develop your copywriting skills a bit more in the future. If you want more information on SEO, web development, design, and many other topics, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!