Before TikTok became the go-to short-form video app, there was Vine.
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Founded in 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll, Vine enabled users to create and share six-second videos. Acquired by Twitter that year, it sparked countless memes and viral clips.
Artists like country singer-songwriter Ruthie Collins used Vine to share song clips. Online personalities, including Logan and Jake Paul, also started on the platform before moving to YouTube.
As other apps started to gain traction, Vine struggled and was shut down by Twitter in 2017. It did, however, inspire Instagram Reels and, most notably, TikTok.
Yet, the legacy of Vine endured, and many passionate fans still yearn for its return. Today, their wish came true.
Vine Is Getting a Reboot
Now known as "Divine," the new app has no connection to X (formerly Twitter, the app where Vine thrived). It also won't be attached to the original Vine platform. However, over 100,000 archived Vine videos will be available on the app. Meanwhile, users can build a new community in the new social media platform by creating and sharing their own clips.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey funded the relaunch of Vine through his nonprofit, which finances open-source projects and other online tools that can change the social media landscape.
Currently, the app is in beta testing, allowing users to preview it before it goes live. It promises users to "experience the raw, unfiltered creativity of real people sharing genuine moments in six-second loops." "Divine" will also be "owned by no one, controlled by everyone."
There's One Big Feature We Forgot To Mention
"Divine" will utilize special technology that flags new content that it suspects to be AI-generated. That means that Breaking Rust, the band behind the AI-generated hit "Walk My Walk," would (hopefully) have no place on the platform.
"Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it," Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee who is behind "Divine," told TechCrunch.
"They're confusing, like — yes, people engage with it; yes, we're using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there's a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm."
