An exclusive report by Mic revealed that the top stars of Vine launched an attempt to save the app from being shut down by Twitter. They ultimately failed and have now moved on to other social media platforms for their content, but not before a gallant bid to save the app that they made a household name.
According to Mic, 18 of the top 50 Vine creators held a meeting last fall with Vine creative development lead Karyn Spencer and some other representatives of the company. The creators saw that the app was heading down the drain, and they wanted to try to save it.
Helping organize the meeting were Marcus Johns, who has 6.1 million followers on Vine, and Piques, who has more than 3.1 million followers. Johns and Piques made their names on the app, and along with their peers, wanted to address the declining engagement levels of Vine users.
The creators made a proposal to ensure the future of Vine. Vine will pay each of them $1.2 million, roll out certain app improvements and foster communication with the creators; in return, the creators involved in the meeting will produce 12 original videos and upload them to Vine per month.
If Vine agreed to the proposal, the app's engagement levels would increase as billions of views will be generated from the influx of original videos. If Vine did not agree, then the creators would move to other platforms.
We all know which way the meeting went.
The Decline Of Vine
When the meeting happened, Vine was already on the decline. According to Amanda Cerny, a Vine content creator and actress, the numbers that the Vine stars were raking in were decreasing, and so most decided to transfer their content to other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.
SwooZie, another popular character on Vine, revealed that the company behind the app never engaged much with the platform's creators.
The Problems Of Vine
Among the changes that the top Vine stars wanted on the platform were a means to address harassment, the ability to insert links to captions, improved recommendation pages and better editing tools.
Vine, however, rarely made such additions, but when they did, the changes came too late.
Vine was also reported to have issues in handling money. The report revealed that Vine threw a luxurious party in Los Angeles in celebration of King Bach gaining the title as Top Viner. The top creators of the platform were invited, but they realized the following day that, if Vine had enough money to throw such a party, why is it not using that money to support content creators?
The Death Of Vine
Vine first appeared to be receptive to the proposal of the creators. However, in the last meeting with Vine's representatives, it became clear that the deal was not pushing through, and that Vine was on its way to being shut down.
"We were driving billions of views - billions - before we left," said Vine star DeStorm Power. "The word Vine became shorthand for short sketch-comedy videos. We did that. Vine didn't do that. We changed culture by making videos on this six-second app."
"It's sad the way it went down, but nobody is upset, bitter or angry. Everyone moved on to other platforms," he added.
