Looks like we’re not the only ones who miss Vine. Jack Dorsey does, too.
On Monday, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter responded to a tweet that reminisced about the defunct short-video sharing app. Dorsey’s response was apparently that he regretted shuttering the beloved app:
I know. Biggest regret 😞
— jack (@jack) April 19, 2022
And honestly? We’re right there with him. Vine was adored for a reason. Those fun, little six-second looped videos captivated us. And it fulfilled a need for being able to post and consume short-form videos that other apps at the time, like Instagram, hadn’t quite filled yet. But even though Vine was shuttered in 2016, that need for bite-sized video content never really went away. That need just spawned other similar apps and features like Instagram’s video capabilities, Snapchat, and TikTok.
And while TikTok can be considered a worthy successor to Vine, it’s not quite the same is it? Sure, vines are much more pared down at six seconds and TikTok videos can be up to 10 minutes long and tend to have more bells-and-whistles like stickers and effects. But perhaps that six-second time limit forced people to be more creative.
Vine showed us that telling stories or jokes in mere seconds is its own art. That being able to hit a punch line in six seconds is an admirable talent. And that, as the Twitter user Dorsey responded to described, sometimes hope can show up as a little video clip of a capybara relaxing in a tub.
An aside: TikTok was launched in 2016, the same year that Vine ended, which is kind of crazy when you think about how new TikTok’s popularity still feels.
