Vine is coming back — sort of. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who shut down Vine in 2017, is supporting a new version of the app, Fortune reports. Called diVine, the reboot intends to bring back archived videos from the original platform.
Developed by Evan Henshaw-Plath (known as Rabble) and funded through Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Other Stuff,” diVine will restore about 10,000 archived Vine clips and allow former users to reclaim or remove their content. The platform also intends to implement special filters to protect the app from AI-generated content, aiming to return users to a nostalgic era in internet history.
Dorsey told TechCrunch that he founded his nonprofit so that the app won’t be shut down “based on the whim of a corporate owner.” The app will also utilize Dorsey’s decentralized protocol, Nostr, to remain independent of corporate control.
Vine was founded in 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll. Twitter purchased the app for $30 million before launching it to the public in 2013. Users could upload, share, like and comment on six-second-long videos, which mainly consisted of comedy sketches and random moments. However, the app shuttered in 2017 after its growth declined, due in part to the challenges of making money from the platform for even the most popular creators. Still, the app provided creators with a launchpad: Stars like singer Shawn Mendes and YouTuber Logan Paul began their careers on the platform.
Back in July, Elon Musk — who bought Twitter and renamed it X — stated in a post on his social media platform that Vine would return to X, just in “AI form.” In 2022, Musk posted a poll on X to gauge interest in reviving Vine. More than 69% of the 4.9 million users who voted said they would want to see Vine return.
