R.I.P Vine

R.I.P+Vine

Krystian Misiewicz, Reporter

As of October 27, 2016, the six-second-video sharing service Vine has been discontinued by Twitter. According to CNN Money, Twitter’s decline in profits from trading and investment created financial problems that made them lay off 9% of the staff and discontinue Vine. Another reason is the declining popularity.

Although the service has been discontinued, videos are still saved and available to be watched. This prompted Vine user to write #RIPVine on Twitter to show their mourning.

Twitter bought the Vine in October 2012 for $30 million, and due to Twitter’s large user base, Vine become popular and used worldwide in about a year after the launch. Vine offered users to film 6 second videos like Ryan Gosling refusing to eat cereal, Bobby Shmurda rapping, and the aftermath of the U.S. embassy bombing in Ankara, Turkey. The 6 second time restraint has challenged users to be more creative within a short time.

Even the Leyden faculty used Vine, including Superintendent Dr. Nick Polyak. “I used Vine for 2 years. And I’ll miss the creative vines where people made them into a loop so the same thing would happen over and over again,” he said.

There has been a lot of speculation of what the alternative will be instead of Vine. Dr. Polyak thinks, “our students are such heavy users of Twitter and Instagram which are the logical alternatives. There is also Periscope and Facebook Live which allows people to share video live.”

Leyden senior Tomasz Zdanowski explains his disapproval to the shutdown. Many people like Tom are concerned about the creativity at risk. “This stopped a lot of people from being creative in a different way. You cannot do what you do on Vine on other websites like YouTube. Nothing can replace it,” says Zdanowski.

“It is unfair since a lot of Vine creators’ life depend on Vine. Twitter could have saved it by selling it to another company.” Tom has used Vine ever since it started getting popular in the summer of 2013 and filmed short videos with his friends.

“At first, my favorite Vines were the smack cams’ where someone would smack their friend and run away. Now, it’s ‘dank memes’ which are very weird videos about trending things like the election.”

“I’m going to miss the creativity from the 6 seconds. It rushed people to be as creative which made it unique.”

Vine has offered a lot of content for entertainment especially to students here at Leyden. Trends from “the whip and nae-nae” to “dabbing” have been popularized by Vine and changed pop culture. Now, since Vine is gone, what will change pop culture?