Vine’s mobile app will be discontinued in the coming months, as announced on Oct. 27 via Vine’s website.
“Vine is a place where you can express yourself in so many different ways and it’s really sad that it’s shutting down because it’s a great, hilarious outlet for expression,” junior Rachel Dickman said.
Before any changes are made to a user’s content, they will be notified. Vine is also working on developing an export tool so that creators can download and save their Vines, captions and comments.
“I think [Vine shutting down] is sad because where are you going to find all the funny videos of kids falling and stuff,” freshman Hala Baidas said. “I feel like [creators] will find another way to get their videos out there but it’s still sad.”
However, others view Vine’s discontinuation favorably. This is the opinion that sophomore Isaac Feldman agrees with.
“I personally think that Vine shutting down is a great thing because the short content on Vine is slowly killing long form content like TV shows and longer internet videos,” Feldman said.
Some believe the shutdown is due to a decrease in users. Last fall, 18 of Vine’s most popular users met with Vine executives and demanded each of them receive $1.2M and a few product changes in exchange for each of them producing three Vines a week. They believed that an increase in content would result in an increase in user-ship. If Vine declined, they would walk away from the app. Vine chose the latter.
Regardless, this shut down only entails users not being able to create new Vines through the service. Videos created prior to the shutdown will still be available to view on Vine’s website, Twitter or anywhere else they have already been shared after the shutdown goes into effect.
“Vine has been a really good way for the entire community and society to become one and really interact,” sophomore Cailey Dorman said. “I know a lot of my friends used it as a way to talk and be creative.”