What happened to Vine, the six-second video app?
Vine was a six-second looping video app that Twitter bought just before it officially launched. It reached the top of the US App Store chart for free apps. Its biggest creators then pulled back after a deal to pay them fell through, and the closure was announced in October 2016. The audience was still enormous when the creators stepped away, and it did not save the app. In April 2026 a reboot called diVine opened to the public, funded by Jack Dorsey, who ran Twitter when Vine was shut down.
Three founders and a sale before launch
Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll developed Vine in June 2012. In October 2012, with the app still in beta, Twitter bought it for a reported US$30 million.
Yusupov sold the company to Twitter just before the service officially launched, so Vine reached the public as part of a much larger business. The big calls about its future, including whether it kept running, sat with Twitter.
What the name and the logo were meant to say
Big Human, the studio that designed Vine's brand, says the name stands for videos growing one after another. Its case study also explains that the loop inside the V stands for looping video. The mark described the whole product in a single letter: short clips that repeat.
That loop was the product. Clips were capped at six seconds and played on repeat, and the limit shaped everything people made with it. Anyone posting had to land the idea or the joke inside that window, knowing it would start again straight away and be judged a second and third time.
Top of the App Store, then 200 million viewers
In April 2013, Vine hit the top of the US App Store chart for free apps. By late 2015 it said it had 200 million viewers every month. That number came from Vine itself and counted people watching. It says nothing about how many people were making the videos, or how few of them the whole thing depended on.
Taken at face value, an audience that size looks like something the app owns. Perspectism reads it differently. People follow people more readily than they follow apps, and a lot of that attention was attached to particular accounts. The people running those accounts could post somewhere else whenever they decided to.
Eighteen creators asked to be paid
Eighteen of Vine's top creators reportedly asked for US$1.2 million each. In return, each would post 12 original Vines a month. The deal fell through, and afterwards nearly every major creator stopped posting original Vines or posted far less.
Whether US$1.2 million each was a fair ask is open to argument. What happened next is harder to argue with. Once those creators eased off, the people who came to watch them had less reason to open the app, and the size of the audience gave Vine no protection at all.
The creators left before the app closed
On 27 October 2016, Twitter and Vine announced the service would be discontinued. In January 2017 the app became Vine Camera, a basic tool for shooting and exporting loops. It kept the format and dropped the community that had made the format worth watching.
The creators stepped back first. The shutdown came later. By the time Twitter made it official, the real ending had already happened, and the announcement mostly confirmed it.
diVine and what it does differently
In April 2026, diVine opened to the public with about 500,000 restored Vine videos. It is funded by and Other Stuff, a nonprofit Jack Dorsey set up in May 2025. Dorsey was Twitter's CEO when Vine closed, and TechCrunch reports he funded the reboot to correct his decision to shut Vine down.
diVine won't accept simple re-uploads of AI or edited content. Videos have to be recorded in the app, or the uploader has to prove how a video was made using C2PA. It also has a compilation mode for building your own lists of videos.
For repurposing, that rules out the usual shortcut of exporting a clip from TikTok or Reels and posting it again. If diVine is in your plan, shoot for it directly, or keep the original files and records you would need to show how a video was made.
Whether diVine has solved the problem that ended Vine is too early to say. Before putting effort into any new app, diVine included, look at what it gives the people who post. Audience size is the number platforms like to lead with. Vine had one of the biggest, and it did not keep the app open.
Frequently asked questions
Who created Vine?
Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll developed Vine in June 2012. Yusupov sold the company to Twitter just before the service officially launched.
Why did Vine shut down?
Twitter and Vine announced the closure on 27 October 2016. By then the biggest creators had already pulled back. Eighteen of them reportedly asked for US$1.2 million each to post 12 original Vines a month, and after the deal failed nearly every major creator stopped posting original Vines or posted far less.
Is Vine coming back?
A reboot called diVine opened to the public in April 2026 with about 500,000 restored Vine videos. It is funded by and Other Stuff, a nonprofit set up by Jack Dorsey, and it requires videos to be recorded in the app or verified with C2PA.