Is Twitter going to end up like Vine?

Did anyone still remember the once popular app called “Vine”? It is an entertaining social media community which people can share six-second-long looping videos with others. There are different themes and can also be searched by trending or popular relevance. The platform’s aim is to keep things short and sweet and because the videos are only six-second long, the creator claimed that it urged users to be creative. The app was even selected as best 50 Android apps of Time’s magazine in 2013.

However, Vine was claimed to be discontinued by Twitter in October 2016. Why would an app seemed to be so widely used and praised was no longer available? And is its parent company Twitter going to make the same mistake again?

 

What’s good about it

• Simplicity

The video only lasts for six seconds so people don’t have to spend a lot of time to browse through and can get entertainment very easily. Also, just use one finger and press the record button on your phone, everyone can create a video.

• Creativity-driven

A lot of “vine stars” which were popular on vine tend to be very creative and related to other users. Celebrities like Logan Paul, King Bach, Lele Pons, Thomas Sanders, and Zach King all have at least over 5 million followers on Vine. They all have the quality of life-related contents which make people laugh or impressed.

• Easy reach to other audiences

Users can also share their vine videos on Facebook and Twitter, so it can thus be shared on different social media and attract more groups of people to the Vine community and watch their videos.

 

There are also some cons

• Challenging for advertisers

Since the video only has six seconds, how do marketers put their ads in the video? Although it is great for users, Vine itself couldn’t get fundings like Youtube or Facebook do.

• Lack of Interaction

They don’t interact with their audiences or users. For example, at the end of every year, Youtube will have a yearly rewind video, featuring some famous Youtube celebrities and include some of the most popular videos of that year. Actually, some of the top Vine stars had noticed their followers grew better on other social media, so they proposed plans which included problems they have experienced or observed, hoping to get solutions from Vine. However, they did not reach an agreement.

• No strategy for competitors

At that time, its biggest competitor was Instagram, which is gained by Facebook, has quickly attracted young people by launching the micro-video capability. For an Instagram user like me, I like how it is an app with multi-function. If I want to connect and share with my friends immediately, there are chat box where I can send messages or I can just tag my friends. Plus, if I saw photo or video that is very interesting, I can simply re-post it to them. But Vine didn’t have such function like these.

Sign of losing

In 2013, the Vine round-ups were exceeding 5,000 page impressions a month, then in the first half of 2014 around 3,000 impressions, now they barely break the 1,000 mark.(Econsultancy, 2015)  However, the Instagram video round-ups have been a great success. The first few posts published between 2013 and the beginning of 2014 regularly exceeded 10,000 impressions.(Econsultancy, 2015) There was already a warning sign in front of them but Vine seemed to be blind about it.

 

Twitter is losing its users too

Twitter acquired Vine in October 2012, the CEO tried to get Viners to share their videos via Twitter, which he planned to help growth on both websites. Nevertheless, the faith of the Viners was gone since they found their followers on other social media had more obvious increase. The most criticized point is that Vine neglected the harassment of the website environment, especially it had become a major thing, Vine chose not to take any action on this. Just like its parent company, Twitter, is also condemned for not addressing the issue. Donald Trump, president of United States, has been the well-known loyal user on Twitter, has also made quite a few controversial tweets.

In July, the report showed that the user base of US has declined to 68 million users, comparing to its previous quarter, which had 70 million. While global user remained the same, it was predicted to have difficulty gaining more profits. After Trump became the president, his favor of Twitter and his tweets had no doubt become the headline news of every newspaper, which also attracted more people to notice about Twitter. However, it is not helpful for gaining new users. Some even condemned Trump’s offensive tweets should get him kicked out of the Twitter.
Here’s one of his recent tweets about the leader of North Korea.

(Credit: Donald Trump’s Twitter)

Apparently, Donald Trump couldn’t save its daily users from decreasing. Some critics argue that the news report headlines like this from Twitter, making people less likely to have the intention to set up a new account, because they could just watch the news instead of setting up an account.

Making improvements

Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter claimed that they have added word limits up to 280, which doubled the previous limit. The company also committed the function of live stream videos. Avoiding its previous mistake from Vine, Twitter would like to engage with its users and sponsorship more, through the CFL for football coverage and Bell on a teen talk show. They have also dedicated to cracking down its website comment harassment. Despite they have learned from the past and tried to overcome their shortcomings, it seems like they just copied what Facebook already had, and claimed it a way of “engaging” with its users.

 

Numbers of famous social network sites worldwide 

(credit: The Telegraph)

Although its daily active users’ percentage has risen up to 12%, its monthly active users’ percentage is still lower than other social media.

Other social media on the chart:
Youtube – 1.5 bn
Tumblr – 368 m

It is worth noticing that Tumblr is a microblogging social media website which is similar to Twitter. Its user experience has very high ratings, 85% of the users are willing to stay and keep using Tumblr while Twitter only has 40%.

On the other hand, Facebook is the first social network that exceeded over 1 billion users, and it has come to 2 billion in September. The top social websites usually have some common points, which comes in different languages, very engaging with its users and some are also convenient to exchange contents with friends and family. They could be shared in real time, and also let the user create its own personality on the website.

 

 

Conclusion

Although I am not a Vine user, I have watched few videos from Vine. I would say there are actual criteria that make me understand why they succeeded so fast and got so popular among young people. But it also reminded of the importance of interacting with audiences and keep an eye on the enemies. The should be more aware of how to develop their own specialty but pay attention to the audiences at the same time. In a digital era, lose the track of trend or competitors, it is definitely not the best thing to do. Besides, feedback from the users is usually the most honest and helpful opinion, I’m surprised even after what Vine stars have told the company about the problems, they kept them away.

For Twitter, it doesn’t have many users as Facebook or Instagram do, but it is still finding its way out and boost their growth and profits. The most important thing for a social media community is engagement, whether it is with the advertisers or the users, it has to communicative. For me, Twitter has a loyal and powerful user like Donald Trump, but if they are going to use it as an advertisement, it is not going to last long(Trump is already a controversial person, to be honest).  As I said, if they can’t create their original feature, keep their users from fleeing to other social media websites, they will still be surpassed by many other rapidly growing social media, like Tumblr or Pinterest.

 

 

 

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)
• https://www.bootcampmedia.co.uk/blog/introduction-to-vine/
• https://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/The_pros_and_cons_of_using_Vine_46479.aspx
• http://www.dmnews.com/social-media/5-reasons-why-vine-failed/article/568860/
• https://econsultancy.com/blog/66298-how-vine-lost-its-edge/
• http://uk.businessinsider.com/vines-biggest-stars-tried-saving-company-2016-10?r=US&IR=T
• http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/business/twitter-earnings/index.html
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/27/twitter-revenue-drops-user-growth-stalls/
• https://mobilesyrup.com/2017/10/26/twitter-q3-2017-earnings-report-users-revenue/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/