Rumors are being stirred up about the potential return of the rapid-fire video streaming service Vine. Vine helped to pave the way for the rise of short-form video services like TikTok, and many fans have never gotten over the loss of it.
Twitter acquired Vine back in 2012, but ended up shutting it down in 2016. While there were previous murmurings about potentially selling the service to another company, those plans never took off. As a result, while the service has been shut down, Twitter still owns the rights and could theoretically restart it whenever it likes.
That's where Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter comes in. Now that he owns the company, he's been discussing various plans that he has for Twitter, but has also brought up Vine. Elon Musk posted a Twitter poll asking if people would like to see Vine return, and the 'Yes' responses reached nearly 70%. Of course, Musk often proposes ideas that don't end up coming to light, but an additional report indicates that development on a Vine reboot may already be underway.
As originally reported by Axios, sources indicate that teams are already working on cleaning up Vine's source code in order to prep it for a new launch before the end of the year. There isn't much time left to meet that goal, and it seems strange that Elon Musk would choose now to ask if anyone actually wants it back. However, it may just be an effort to drum up interest and excitement over the idea prior to revealing its launch.
If Vine makes a comeback, it has a lot of new competition that was either just getting started or didn't yet exist when Vine was closed. TikTok's rise has led to other major companies like Facebook and Google to attempt to mimic the formula on sites like Instagram and YouTube, with mixed results. However, all of these services allow for much longer videos than the original Vine did, so if it follows its original formula, there might still be an interesting niche for it.
While Vine fans might be excited for the potential return of the video sharing service, they should take this information with a grain of salt. The acquisition of Twitter has left a lot of questions on its own, with Musk recently ruffling feathers by asking people to pay for the blue checkmark on their accounts. In any case, with only a couple months left in the year, fans won't have to wait long to learn if the rumors are true and Twitter can meet the deadline goal.