Launched in 2012, Vine, an app for 6-second video clips designed for Twitter, has officially announced its shutdown. The date of its shutdown is still undeclared as of yet. The years following its launch have proved it has become something more than what its creators original intended. One year after it had been released, for example, Vine had allowed its users to record clips with their phone’s cameras which increased the amount of people using it. People were able to become celebrities through the video platforms created on Vine, and on August 2014, 3.64 percent of all Android users were using Vine. However, on June 2013, a rival app known as Instagram was introduced, it’s first 15 second video clip marked the beginning of the end for Vine, which did not move fast enough to differentiate. The evidence is clear when it is known that today only 0.66 percent of Android users use Vine as of today. To make matters worse, Vine was rarely ever stable under management.

Years of executive churn was one of the contributions for Vine’s collapse. As Instagram and another rival app, Snapchat, grew into popularity, marketers’ interest in Vine dropped significantly. Even the stars that gained their fame through Vine have continued their work on other platforms, no longer pushing the boundaries of 6 second mediums. By this year, when executives of Twitter were rumored to have discussed ways to bring it’s various video sources together, and when more discussions were heard about Twitter absorbing Vine into it’s flagship app, the employees of Vine took this as a sign that Twitter never valued Vine as a standalone property. What’s worse was that there was no interrogation with Vine, and when Twitter tried to sell this failing app, no buyers were in sight. Having failed to ship anything of consequence for a year, it appears what was once an app that would lead the new era of video clips on the internet is now doomed to fade into obscurity.