Vine May Not Shut Down After All If Twitter Sells It Instead
Soon after Twitter announced in late October that it would be shutting down Vine, a considerable number of people expressed their disappointment with the news, with some sharing their favorite six-second looping videos as a form of lament for the once hugely popular app. Apparently, some third-party companies have taken notice of the outpourings of support and have stepped in with offers to acquire Vine and help it live on.
According to a new report by TechCrunch citing multiple sources, “Twitter is currently vetting multiple term sheets from companies offering to buy Vine, and hopes to make a deal soon.” The site adds that Twitter, which acquired Vine in October 2012 for a reported $30 million, is now choosing from a pool of five to decide which company to sell the short-form video sharing app to after receiving “a large number of bids.”
Several of the bidders are said to be from Asia, including the Japanese messaging company Line. (From a purely phonetic standpoint, Line does sound like a good match for Vine.)
Vine was officially launched in January 2013 as a free app on iOS. It soon became a worldwide phenomenon for its service that enabled users to produce often hilarious and sometimes mesmerizing six-second looping videos, even becoming the most used video sharing app and most downloaded free iOS app in just a few months after its release.
But as my colleague Bryan put it: “Vine was expected to do for videos what Instagram had done for photos. Unfortunately, what actually happened is that Instagram added videos to its popular service, giving users little reason to make a switch.”
And so it came to the point where Twitter, which had been dealing with its own problems, had to make the decision to shut down Vine.
In any case, whether Twitter secures a buyer for Vine or not, Vine will remain in archive mode, allowing all existing videos to be watched and played and looped ad infinitum.
For now, Vine remains downloadable from the App Store
