Twitter logo/icon on a smartphone screen (Photo : Getty images/Bloomberg / Contributor)
In a puzzling turn, Vine declared that the app's greatly mourned death has been mostly exaggerated. Instead of shutting down completely, next January the Vine app will become Vine Camera that allows users to make the six-second looping videos that has made Vine a hit. Users will be able to either add the videos to Twitter or save these to own phone. Vines will loop on Twitter just as it did on the Vine app. Vine Camera will also direct Vine users to follow each other on Twitter.
Daily Herald reported that some outlets reported that creation of new Vines had already been halted as per the vagueness in the original closure announcement. Yet the new announcement encourages users to "continue making and sharing videos" on Twitter.
Vine, will now go from a standing network to a unique way to post to Twitter. That's a good thing, still it's coming as a late-game review. Using Vine to give Twitter better video features could have guided the platform face off against Facebook and Snapchat - if it was tried in 2013. Yet, it took Twitter a mind-boggling three years to still allow users to link own Twitter and Vine accounts.
Fortune reported that as broad management issues kept aside, it feels like tremendous PR misstep. The narrative of Vine closing down contributed to the overall sense of Twitter as a rudderless and slowing operation on its way to also-ran status in the social media ecosystem. Many stories about the shutdown focused on it as a cost-cutting measure with Vine's server and staffing costs apparently too much for Twitter's Balance sheet to manage.
There are no details as to how the integration will work on the Twitter side. Though Vine's fading makes it unlikely that Twitter will be overflowing with looping videos even a modest inflow could be a headache for users who wish to choose Twitter's current text-centric environment. That enigma - definitely highlights one of Twitter's continuous problems - a continuing lack of clarity about what the platform is supposed to be absolutely.
Reframing the change in an effort to effectively knit Vine into Twitter couldn't have entirely obscured that reality while it wouldn't have been an open admission of defeat.
