Is Vine Suffering The Twitter Effect?

It’s been four months since The Atlantic published “A Eulogy for Twitter” and in that time we’ve seen the departure of one CEO and the lack of announcing a replacement. Not to mention it’s falling stock prices and slow user growth. It’s not all bad. Two out three key metrics are still increasing: active users and engagement (timeline views are down). But the key question is: will Twitter’s younger, corky brother be suffering the same fate?

First, let’s look at the stats. Vine has more than 40 million users as reported by the company, which is a entirely different statistic than reported by the big social networks. Usually it’s daily or monthly active users, but Vine has yet to release that number. They are going around touting a 1.5 billion loops per day, as reported last year, but again that is not an accurate depreciation of daily users.

It had a quick rise to fame, even with the explosion of Instagram video a mere six months later. But is it’s 7-seconds of fame over? Is Vine shrinking and will it eventually fade away?

I don’t believe so, and here’s why.

First, Vine is producing extraordinary content creators–like Lele Pons. She was the first person on Vine to reach 1 billion loops (current at 6 billion loops) on her vines and she also created the phrase “Do It For The Vine”, now adopted by the company and by the world. She has over 9.2 million followers on the app and 2 million on Instagram. Her fame is due solely to Vine.

And now, Cameron Dallas. Before continuing to read, you should ask the nearest 13 year old girl what they think of Cameron Dallas. It’s probably something like this. While less Vine followers than Lele (only 8.3 million), he’s fame is notable because he took it off Vine, staring in the 2014 film The Expelled (with notable bad acting) and 2015 films The Frog Kingdom and The Outfield.

Vine’s success is also outside of the app. This is more of an attribution of the next generation connected social networking sites, but more and more Vine star are demonstrating their talent on and off the app.

You can see this in Vine’s presence on historically YouTube turf VidCon. This shows that the app is being seen as a rising star of online video content. More and more we’re seeing Viners take to YouTube to post more “traditional” online videos and promoting them on their Vine account. A look at the top Viners will show that cross-platform self-promotion like this is a key staple in any Viners plan for internet domination (for example: this,this, and this.) It seems that top Viners will use promotion of their Snapchat, Instagram, and recent YouTube video as a substitute for real original content. And let’s not even get started on DigiTour, which appears to be a tour around the country taking Viners and putting them live on stage to do…..something.

The recent announcement of music tagging on Vine capitalizes on two important trends on Vine: the ability for it to make famous seemly unknown songs and the ability to make famous seemly unknown singers. Songs have an important place in the popular page of Vine. Recent songs have been Run by AWOLNATION, I’m Good by The Mowgli’s, and Reflections by Misterwives, which make their rounds in turn on the loops of top Viners. But is is also the birthplace of new artists like Jack & Jack and Shawn Mendes coming solely from Vine.

Is the end of Vine near? No where close. It’ll still be producing original content and dominating the online video both on the app, YouTube, and Facebook.

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