this video was brought to you by us slidebean make beautiful slide presentations in no time get one free month by signing up at slidebean.com YouTube back in April 2019 I select and closed group of 100 or so Tech enthusiasts received an invitation to the private beta of bite and why would anyone care about bite well mainly because its creator is Dom Hoffman one of the founders of Vine yeah Vine the Beloved and very much Dead social app for creating six second long videos some of which received billions of looped views with bites beta launch some Die Hard Vine nostalgics wanted to believe that it was coming back from the dead and had high hopes for it but the truth is six months after that no one knows anything about it and even their website seems somewhat abandoned needless to say the bar is set a lot higher now for a new and unknown player like bite to compete with monsters like Instagram with its 1 billion monthly active users and plus 500 million daily stories not to mention Tick Tock who reached 188 million downloads in the App Store in the first quarter of 2019. it would require big money and it doesn't seem that they're making it so the diagnosis as of today is that bite is dead even before having launched and it's more like Vine's ghost rather than a rebirth looking at their YouTube channel pretty much summarizes it in this episode of starter forensics we're gonna throw back Divine and dig into some key aspects of its rise and fall including Twitter's acquisition of the company along with some product and competition analysis this is starter forensics Vine thank you foreign was it was a video sharing up for six second Loop videos that looked like the next big thing back in 2013. its particular format allowed for a very unique way of serving video content and chances are you've seen at least a few memes gifs or funny videos that came out of Vine very soon it was evident that this video mechanics were driving creators in a particular direction more about having fun being creative with the constraints and not so much about journal entries it became something wilder than it was originally thought of according to Hoffman still being just a theme of three founders with a product in Veda Vine caught the attention off Twitter there may have been some pressure in the air since just a few months earlier Facebook had acquired that Goldmine called Instagram so in October 2012 Twitter acquired Vine for a reported 30 million dollars before even the app launched on paper the move made sense for Twitter mainly because they didn't have any video featured by that time and it could have been a special bond between the 140 character format and the six second limitation of Vine Vine was officially launched in January 2013 on the up store and then later on Android only six months after it already counted 13 million regular users very suddenly some viners started stacking followers and Views by the millions creating a new breed of social media celebrities that success was merely due to the charm of the content being produced and there were no successful efforts from Vine to monetize the app despite this the community and the love for Ryan's concept were growing rapidly some went really far into the production and the creation of their six second moment of Fame but apparently there was a leadership problem in Vines management at the time it was reported by various former employees to different sources apparently there was a reluctancy to truly join Twitter creatively so the apps never really mixed completely and it was never clear how should they mix for instance Divine team was the only cell working in a small office in New York City while the rest of Twitter was operating mainly in their San Francisco office still Vine kept growing and reached its speaking popularity in 2014. some viners managed to close deals with Brands interested in reaching their millions of followers but Vines struggled to monetize the app and failed to provide a solid marketing infrastructure for its creators unlike Instagram that was thriving and gave a low blow with their video feature release in mid-2013. they introduced 15 second long videos and very well leveraged the 16 billion photos that had already been shared on their platform some consider Instagram's incursion and video to be the true beginning of vines downfall along with their lack of effective reaction it wasn't too long before Vine celebrities like Lil pons or sack King started taking their content and followers to Instagram or YouTube and there was also Snapchat who had raised the series C round the same year for 50 million dollars and was catering a very similar product certainly to the same audience and at a much faster Pace former Vine employees have acknowledged that they were outrun by the competition and evolving the product the six second features seem to be an important limitation to expand the platform's reach for other markets and other use cases but they stuck to it here's where product management and competition turned out critical let's talk about Twitter's product strategy during that time in terms of video many argue that they never had a clear direction for the video feature and that it was kind of all over the place the following series of events talk about it as you can see just a few months after having Acquired and launched Vine instead of developing that product Branch Twitter released a native video feature that allowed to record or upload 30 second videos inside the app this showcased a lack of confidence to creatively bet on Vine and its format and to stick to more traditional means in 2015 they also acquired Niche a talent agency to connect advertisers with popular content creators and celebrities this was an effort to help manage relations between viners and Brands and to provide a more solid Revenue structure Niche was a talent agency though they wanted to believe that they weren't like a tech company remember that wework story so their valuation was fatter time proved that it wasn't effective enough and it really never took off but still that same year Twitter acquired Periscope for 86 million dollars Periscope is a live streaming social app that was booming at the time but never really became the next big thing Twitter had been looking for they also pursued some partnership deals for live streamed events like NFL games and Bloomberg shows making it all the more confusing as to where Vine fit in their video strategies these unconnected moves undermine the Vine's team performance and product development Vine Executives and employees had been churning out at a high rates since 2013. Dom Hoffman himself left the company in 2014 shortly followed by Colin Crowe another one of the co-founders many more left others came and the company even remained headless for some time all this while the competition was doing their thing and leaving Vine behind only in early 2016 already a few months before passing away Vine evolved from the six second restriction and allowed videos of up to 140 seconds long wink wink but it was too late so finally in October 2016 Twitter released a very short notice on medium announcing the shutdown of Vine of course they didn't mention all the details and events that have been outlined here but and they didn't even really provide a reason for the demise all the millions of vines produced would supposedly remain on the side as an archive but that archive seems to have been lost now most of the original vine celebrities had already moved to other platforms like Instagram YouTube and had been thriving since Lil pons has 37 million followers on Instagram and Logan Paul has almost 17 million as of today but still a lot of other viners who had earned a place there where kind of left helpless and heartbroken the love for Ryan can still be seen on YouTube just go to search for things like funny vines to find quite a good amount of compilation videos with several millions of views this can be taken as proof that vine had a rightful place among the big players in the social media Market but apparently poor management took a lot of responsibility in This Disaster maybe Vine wasn't meant to be mixed with Twitter or maybe the acquisition happened just too early for both companies shortly after Twitter's announcement Raz yosapov one of Vine's co-founders who left the company in 2015 posted a very straightforward statement don't sell your company he posted this on Twitter of course but truth be told Twitter's financials have never been easy and the company has been known to struggle to survive over time if we go back to the early years like 2007-2008 they even turned down several acquisition offers including a couple from Mark Zuckerberg himself a few years later they considered selling the platform in different occasions due to financial difficulties and weren't lucky to find a buyer still they've managed to keep going all the way to today and they even have the blind loyalty of a very let's say influential character in conclusion we can't really say that Twitter's acquisition of Vine was the cause of death but selling the company was not great what we can say is having a solid and happy team with a clear product strategy based on your strengths and weaknesses along with keeping competitors close to the radar are critical business aspects on which a company depends regardless of how basic they sound you should probably care about these things before selling your company foreign