Vine was a short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc., four months later for $30 million. Vine launched with its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with Android and Windows versions following shortly after.
Videos published on Vine's social network could also be shared on different social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Vine app was also used to browse videos, along with a group of videos that were uploaded by theme, and hence sparked a hope that users could make "trend" videos. Vine then competed with other social media services such as Instagram and Snapchat. By December 2015, Vine had over 200 million active users.
Vine contributed to the rise of influencers and collaborative content creation, with some users cohabiting to increase production and audience reach. As one of the first short-form video platforms, it was relatively new, and it preceded later services such as TikTok, where similar content strategies became more widespread.
On October 27, 2016, Twitter announced that it would disable all uploads, but that viewing and download would continue to be active. Twitter officially shut down Vine on January 17, 2017, and the app's overall leftover function was discontinued a few months later. On January 20, 2017, Twitter launched an online archive of every Vine video that had ever been published. The archive was officially discontinued in April 2018. Vine's co-founder Dom Hofmann created a successor not affiliated with Twitter, which launched on January 24, 2020, as Byte; was renamed twice; and officially discontinued on May 3, 2023.
On November 13, 2025, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced a successor called Divine, which includes archives of some videos uploaded to Vine, in addition to new videos.
History Vine was founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll in June 2012. The company was acquired by Twitter in October 2012 for a reported $30 million. It launched its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with an Android version following on June 2, 2013. On November 12, 2013, the application was released for Windows Phone. In a couple of months, Vine became the most used video sharing application in the market, even with low adoption of the app. On April 9, 2013, Vine became the most downloaded free app within the iOS App Store and on May 1, 2014, Vine launched the web version of the service to explore videos.
In July 2014, Vine updated its app with a new "loop count", meaning every time someone watched a vine, a number on top of the video would appear showing how many times it was viewed. The "loop count" also included views from vines that were embedded onto other websites. On October 14, 2014, an Xbox One version was released allowing Xbox Live members to watch the looping videos.
On October 27, 2016, Vine announced that Twitter would be discontinuing the Vine mobile app. Vine said users of the service would be notified before any changes to the app or website were made. The company also stated that the website and the app would still be available for users to view and download Vines, but users would no longer be able to post.
The discontinuation of Vine came as many different competing platforms began to introduce their own equivalents to Vine's short-form video approach. Platforms such as Instagram began to introduce their own takes on the short video angle, such as Instagram Video where users were able to upload 15-second videos to their profiles.
Marketers leaving the platform was also a large part of the decision by Twitter to discontinue Vine. Many monetary sources began to move to longer short video platforms, and with them followed many popular Vine creators. Between January and June of 2016, more than half of Vine users with more than 15,000 followers ceased uploading or deleted their accounts to move on to other platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
On December 16, 2016, it was announced that the Vine mobile app would remain operational as a standalone service, allowing users to publish their videos directly to Twitter instead of Vine; the Vine community website would shut down in January. On January 17, 2017, the app was renamed to "Vine Camera". Although the app still enabled users to record six-second videos, they could only be shared on Twitter or saved on a camera roll. The release of the Vine Camera was met with poor reviews on both the Android and iOS App Stores. On January 20, 2017, Twitter launched an Internet archive of all Vine videos, allowing people to continue watching previously filmed Vine videos; however, in 2018 this was also removed by Twitter.
The Verge reported that the closure of Vine led many of its most notable users, such as Kurtis Conner, David Dobrik, Danny Gonzalez, Drew Gooden, Liza Koshy, Shawn Mendes, Jake Paul, Logan Paul, and Lele Pons, to move to YouTube.
In November 2018, co-founder Dom Hoffman announced the upcoming successor to Vine, Byte, also previously known as V2; it was slated to come out in spring 2019. The Byte application launched publicly a year later on January 24, 2020. In 2021, Vine has announced that they will discontinue their app.
After Elon Musk completed his purchase of social media company Twitter, he posted a poll on Twitter on October 30, 2022, whether to "Bring back Vine?". It has received over 4.9 million votes, with the majority (69.6%) being in favor. An Axios article published on October 31, 2022, stated that Musk purportedly requested Twitter engineers work on rebooting Vine. On April 17, 2024, Musk posted the same poll on X (formerly Twitter) which accumulated nearly 2.3 million votes, with 69.6% being in favor.
Features Vine enabled users to record short video clips up to six seconds long while recording through its in-app camera. The camera would record only while the screen was being touched, enabling users to edit on the fly or create stop motion effects. Additional features were added to the app in July 2013; these included grid and ghost image tools for the camera, curated channels (including themed areas and trending topics/users), the ability to "revine" (share again, similar to Twitter's "retweet") videos on a personal stream, and protected posts.
In August 2015, Vine introduced Vine Music, whose "Snap to Beat" feature creates perfect infinite music loops. In June 2016, Vine announced that it was experimenting with letting users attach video clips up to 140 seconds.
Vine Kids In January 2015, Vine launched Vine Kids, an app for iOS that was designed specifically for children aged 7 to 12. It was designed by a group of Vine employees in order to try to create a safer space for younger users to eventually watch content which was deemed appropriate for children. Every video posted to the app was selected by Vine employees to ensure safety.
Vine's Head of Communication and Marketing, Carolyn Penner, noting the features of the app, told CNN that "children can always swipe back and forth on the mobile screen to find new videos, and they can also tap on the screen to produce some sound effects".
Usage Vine attracted different types of uses, including short-form comedy and music performances, video editing, and stop motion animation. On February 1, 2013, a Turkish journalist used Vine to document the aftermath of the 2013 United States embassy bombing in Ankara. Vine had also gained ground as a promotional tool; in 2013, the track listing of Daft Punk's album Random Access Memories was revealed via a Vine video, and on September 9, 2013, Dunkin' Donuts became the first company to use a single Vine as an entire television advertisement. A&W Restaurants launched its Mini Polar Swirls on Vine on April 1, 2014, with the claim that it was the first product launch on Vine.
Music-oriented videos also shared success on the service; in July 2013, a Vine post featuring a group of women twerking to the 2012 song "Don't Drop That Thun Thun" became popular, spawned response videos, and led the previously obscure song to peak at number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In March 2013, 22 Vines were presented in an exhibit entitled #SVAES (The Shortest Video Art Ever Sold) at the Moving Image art fair in New York City. Copies of the videos were available to purchase on thumb drives for US$200 each. Angela Washko's "Tits on Tits on Ikea" was sold to Dutch art advisor, curator and collector Myriam Vanneschi during the event, marking the first-ever sale of a Vine as art.
Following the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, then-St Louis City Alderman Antonio French used Vine as a way to document the protests in Ferguson and the surrounding area. These videos were among the earliest accounts of the racial tensions in Ferguson, and helped bring national attention to the situation.
Internet memes Vine has spawned countless internet memes across its years of active service. Notable examples include:
"Eyebrows on Fleek" is a vine posted on June 21, 2014, by Kayla Lewis, better known as her online personality "PEACHES MONROEE", following her complimenting her eyebrows, and saying how her eyebrows, the now iconic phrase, were "on fleek" ("on fleek" basically meaning "attractive"). The vine quickly grew in popularity around the internet, even making an appearance inside an Ariana Grande video and many beauty articles, of them repeatedly using the phrase. Following these events, Lewis wanted to trademark the phrase, stating how everyone uses the phrase, yet she doesn't get any recognition, so she started a GoFundMe page, with the profits going towards her own cosmetics line. Since then, her GoFundMe campaign continues to grow to her goal of $100,000.
"Squidward Dab" is a vine posted on January 26, 2016, taking place in what appears to be a SpongeBob-themed parade inside an amusement park, when a float drives along with a person wearing a Squidward costume standing atop it. A man in the crowd yells out to Squidward asking him to do the "dab", a popular dance craze at the time, to which Squidward replies and dabs. It became a very popular meme.
"What are those?" is a vine posted in 2015 by A-RODney King, which was taken from an Instagram post by Brandon Moore, better known as "Young Busco", following him making fun of a police officer's shoes shouting out "What are those!?," while panning the camera towards the shoes. The vine quickly grew in popularity, receiving nearly 40 million loops and users among vine imitating the trend. The phrase made its way into the film Black Panther when a character from the film, Shuri, sees her brother, T'Challa and shouts out the phrase after seeing his sandals. When Moore saw that scene when he brought his family to watch the movie, he said it left him "sick as fuck". His daughter wanted to record the moment on her phone, but it was slapped out of her hand by Moore. He went on to say "didn't want to be fucking part of this," he stated to HuffPost, "Every time I see that shit, I get depressed." Moore died in November 2018 at the age of 31 from combined drug intoxication, with "cocaine, morphine, codeine, methamphetamines and ecstasy" found in his blood.