Vine co-founder Colin Kroll is stepping down today from regular day-to-day duties, but despite this, he'll remain on as an adviser. This isn't the first time a co-founder of Vine has stepped down, as Dom Hofmann left the company in January to pursue other important matters.
"I'm so proud of Vine - the team + the product. I'll no longer be working there day-to-day as of today but will remain involved as an adviser," says Kroll via his Twitter account.
Kroll's departure came 24 hours after Vine announced a new private messaging feature. This move is Vine's first foray into the realm of private messaging, something Snapchat and Facebook have been doing for a long time. Whether or not users will gravitate toward private messaging on Vine remains to be seen; however, it's a good addition to the service nonetheless.
Vine is one of the most popular applications for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. The company was acquired by Twitter back in 2012 for $30 million, and has become Twitter's most successful acquisition to date.
In the United States, Vine ranks among the top 50 most-downloaded apps, which is quite decent for an app that only allows users to upload six-second clips to the web. This limitation has turned out to be the winning formula for Vine, as it forces users to be creative with their content. So far, we've seen popular user-generated content coming from Vine, and even celebrities are getting in the mix.
Furthermore, advertisers have also taken a liking to the service, as several movie studios and cable networks have turned to Vine to promote upcoming content.
After Twitter proved that social network users have no problem creating and consuming tiny bits of video content with Vine, Facebook followed up with a similar feature with Instagram. While Vine only allows for up to six seconds, Instagram goes up to 15 seconds, though that has not stopped Vine users from delivering content on a daily basis.
As it stands right now, it is clear that Colin Kroll and Dom Hofmann have left behind a legacy that continues to flourish.
