Vine’s Impact for Today’s Social Media Platforms
Hey you! Do you like to move it, move it, like King Julian did from Madagascar? Do you love making skits where you play all 8–10 characters? If so, you probably know a little about the social media platform called TikTok. There are currently 73.7 million users in the United States alone and that number will continue to rise as popularity gains. Does this not sound like an awesome success story? What if I told you that TikTok was not the first social media platform to do this. Are you able to tell me who that was?
If you said Vine, then congratulations or the title gave it away. I am 24 years old, and I was obsessed with Vine. To me, it is crazy to think there are people who do not realize the impact Vine had on TikTok. It was one of the first platforms to do short videos. One of my favorite videos was a guy sharing his music with his friends in his car. That same video can now be found on TikTok today! Vine was created in June 2012, released in 2013, by Dom Hofmann. Based on TikToks success, you would have thought Vine would still be here today, but they are not. Vine was officially shut down in 2017. Two years before TikTok took the world by storm. Vine was not designed for one type of person. Anyone can use the platform for however they wanted. It gave people a voice to share humor or even music. A no judgment zone essentially. Anyone had the potential to become a Vine Star. It was just a matter of if you could stick out from the rest of the pack. There are celebrities whose careers started off on Vine. We see this same pattern with TikTok today. Take Khaby Lame, a man from Italy. His videos consist of pointing out the obvious when people make a situation more difficult than it already is. How many followers does this man have? He has 106.2 million followers and 1.6 billion likes. The crazy thing about his story is that he lost his job during the pandemic and is now TikTok famous while making money due to TikToks creator fund. The way you can make money is based on how many views you get on your videos. Ordinary people like you and I have made millions by doing what they love. People have quit their jobs to become full-time content creators. You can argue that TikTok is the more evolved form of Vine. There is even a TikTok account that posts old Vine videos.
I still remember when I downloaded Vine which was a few months after it came out. The way people share TikToks today was how my friends and I did back then. Well, we basically sent the videos via text message. Today, you can send TikToks via text message and share these videos to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. A lot more options to work with than Vine initially worked with. Want to know my first Vine? I was at my friend’s house where he had two pantries about 10 feet apart. My friend would start to record as I was announcing my name, step into pantry door 1, close the door, and he would stop recording. I would then go to pantry door 2 and step inside and close the door. My friend would then yell “GO ”!!! I step out of the pantry and bow down. With both videos combined, it looked like I teleported from one spot to another.
Does the process for recording a Vine sound familiar? It should because it is identical to TikTok! When you go to create a TikTok, you can record, stop, delete, and record again. However, TikTok allows you to do way more than what Vine offered. Vine videos only allowed six seconds for recording whereas TikTok allows you to record up to three minutes. You can even add filters, emojis, icons, and do voice overs. Again, more options than Vine had. Listen, I was skeptical about downloading TikTok at first but then I realized it was essentially my favorite app, Vine. If I loved one, shouldn’t I love the other? I downloaded TikTok when the pandemic first started and have been on it ever since. I was probably on it the most during the pandemic compared to other platforms that I use.
I love the Vine nostalgia I get from using TikTok. Seeing the old videos that used to be on Vine and people recreating content that was used back then. Maybe that is a reason why TikTok has become popular. They are hitting the original Vine audience in Millennials while hitting their primary audience in Gen Z.
As I mentioned before, TikTok is a more polished product of Vine. Essentially, Vine is the father of short videos with TikTok being an offspring. Then TikTok had Instagram and Snapchat where they got into the short video game with Instagram Reels and Snapchat Spotlight. I believe that Vine was ahead of its time all things considered. When Vine released in 2013, Instagram was only 3 years old, and Snapchat was only 2 years old. All three were in the beginning of their life cycle trying to understand how to survive. Everyone wanted to be different whereas everyone today is trying to be the same. In this story, everyone is trying to be what Vine once was.
The trail back home is clear. Everything leads back to Vine. They may only have lasted for 4 years but they continued to stay in the hearts of their users. The passion the users had between 2013–2017 can be shown even now on other social media platforms. They set the wheel in motion for innovation and content creation. Do you believe we would still have TikToks, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat Spotlights if Vine never existed?
