On Oct.27 at 12:30 p.m., Vine died. She was survived by her terrible father, Twitter. She was just 3 years old.
The cause of death was murder by discontinuation. Twitter has taken responsibility for the killing, admitting that they will soon disable uploading of new videos to the app.
The motivation for the deadly act is currently unknown.
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In her early years, Vine worked hard to find her place in the web world. At first, she was mostly a collection of jerky, low-quality videos that didn’t amount to much, a joke amongst the “here today, gone tomorrow” world of new apps, like Yo!, which was an app that said the word “yo” and received a million dollars.
But then she carved out a distinct niche on iPhones everywhere. Amateur comedians, artists, athletes, and random people from across the world flocked to her, creating one of the most creative communities on the web.
As she grew, making a good Vine became an art. Music looping became incredibly precise. Comedians perfected the timing of six-second comedy. Artists continued innovation, meme-editors became more ridiculous, and codes, culture, and unspoken rules were created and broken while millions and millions of people watched.
Many will remember Vine for her scandalous years palling around with wanna-be Justin Biebers, but they all kicked her to the curb once they tasted a little fame. Though dozens of people who started on Vine eventually achieved legitimate fame, the greatest part of Vine was always finding the unknown rather than watching the famous, whether it was a funny dude cracking jokes in his bedroom, a farmer hanging with her animals, or some lady filming something weird in a park.
In the end, Vine may have never lived up to the high standards that her father Twitter set for her. After her classmate Instagram introduced video posts in 2013, Vine couldn’t keep up her initial momentum and faltered. But she never sold out by resorting to obnoxious pre-roll ads, therefore making it nearly impossible to appropriately monetize.
In the end, lacking any major updates in the past year or so, she was killed.
Twitter claims they will keep memories of her online, but we know it won’t be the same.
We loved you, Vine. It felt like we only had six seconds with you, and now you’re gone.
