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It's worth constantly re-iterating that Vine [1] was shutdown by Twitter in 2017 back when Twitter was losing a lot of cash. It was available for any tech compa
by someperson 6y ago
It's worth constantly re-iterating that Vine [1] was shutdown by Twitter in 2017 back when Twitter was losing a lot of cash. It was available for any tech company to purchase for pennies on the dollar and was losing $10 million/month to run [2].
Vine was very popular and a lot of people were very disappointed when it was shutdown. It predated TikTok and Musical.ly and certainly had the vast majority of users for short looping videos before it shutdown. Previously users have suggested Vine used a follow/subscribe-model and was not algorithmic like TikTok, but adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a competitor would not have been that hard.
It's been reported Microsoft is looking at buying TikTok with some investors valuing the company at $30-$70 billion. [3] That number is high in the context of this latest WSJ article, which says Twitter has $7.8 billion in cash and a market cap of $29 billion.
However, TikTok reportedly earned $5.6 billion in revenue in Q1 2020 [4], and reportedly made a $3 billion net profit in 2019 [5]. It those numbers are correct then TikTok (which often called a Vine clone, and Vine 2.0) has grown bigger than Twitter itself.
This leapfrog happened in an era of cash-rich Silicon Valley software companies, where investment funding is easily obtainable.
It's worth reflecting deeply on this turn of events, and why Vine was allowed to wither and die, only for a better executed clone immediately take over and dominate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/revive-vine https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/revive-vine
[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-aims-for-a-deal-to-buy-tiktoks-u-s-business-11596418842 https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-aims-for-a-deal-to-bu...
[4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-idUSKBN23O114 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-idUSKBN...
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html
- tempsy 6y agomy theory is that their current head of product, who was the founder of Periscope which Twitter bought pre-launch, made the argument for Live Video (his app) over Vine at that time when Live streaming eg Meerkat/Periscope looked to be the "next big thing" in social media (which it never became). Twitter had to choose one video strategy and went with live because of Periscope and it ended up being the wrong decision.
- someperson 6y agoTwitter in 2016 was bleeding money. In that financial situation, offloading a product that was losing $10 million/month without an immediate path to profitability was a reasonable decision. The question is why a cash rich Silicon Valley company didn't buy Vine for pennies on the dollar. It could have been Google. It could have been Apple. It could have been Microsoft. It could have been Facebook. Personally, I think it could even have been revived by private equity (who would immediately do deep cost cutting to bring the burn rate down).
- lilyball 6y ago> adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a competitor would not have been that hard I'm not convinced this is true. TikTok's algorithmic "For You Page" is astonishingly good. Somehow TikTok manages to zero in on stuff relevant to users extremely quickly, and without relying on spamming a lot of general interest popular content. I created a TikTok account recently and literally within minutes I was getting an extremely personalized FYP (For You Page) without even following anyone. If my wife and I compare our FYPs we'll find virtually no overlap (possibly a few cat videos but that's it). I've never seen anyone else do an algorithmic feed even half as good as this. Everyone else seems to rely on just spamming you with general-interest popular videos and hope you'll find enough people to follow to fill out the feed yourself. TikTok's FYP isn't even driven by follows, that's a separate feed.
- someperson 6y agoTry opening YouTube in an incognito tab and start watching a few videos (on say, cooking). You'll notice the recommended videos on the homepage gets very accurate very fast. The algorithms behind recommendation engines are well understood. Companies can and do invest huge amounts into making their algorithms better and it yes, it definitely takes a lot of effort to tweak and refine the algorithm to make the overall experience addictive and relevant. But the seemingly widely held idea that TikTok builds better recommendation algorithms than other companies (including Facebook's News Feed) doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny.
- asveikau 6y agoI find the YouTube algorithms to be a little repetitive. They pidgenhole you into interests, or sub-interests within a larger field (some narrow take on a topic), then they suggest small variations on the same crap again and again. It's very easy to feel stuck within a bubble on YouTube. When I notice that happening, the site becomes very boring.
- kanox 6y agoTwitter does not appear to have a recommendation algorithm worth a damn.
- m3kw9 6y agoIf you remember, vine needed you to select, like all other Content serving apps, what you like and it tries to show you interesting stuff. Tiktok by passed that step like magic and got the user locked in fast
- justinzollars 6y ago> Vine The secret sauce of TikTok isn't the availability of short video. Its short video with the world's library of music. TikTok is about music videos. More importantly, Twitter would have messed it up. If Vine would have lasted until 2020 it would be filled with riots, violence and left wing politics - a reflection of Jack Dorsey (and staff's) attitude. Just like twitter.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoAre you trying to frame that as a bad thing? Twitter's been fantastic for seeing raw footage of police brutality and protest documentation, as well as organizing demonstrations.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoI suspect Twitter would curate TikTok differently from the current Chinese teams. More tolerance for non-cisgender, less for politics.
- kanox 6y agoTikTok is clearly the superior service. It would be a travesty if Twitter managed to steal it thanks to Trump's machinations.
- narrationbox 6y agoHow heavily leveraged are M&As on this scale?
- baby 6y agoI never understood why vine went away. It seemed like everybody enjoyed it, it had its stars that were producing content constantly, and it seemed like it had great potential for growth. And then all of sudden it was shut down.
- laser 6y agoDon’t conflate ByteDance and TikTok. ByteDance makes the vast majority of its revenue from a mobile feed app called TouTiao and Chinese-TikTok called Douyin. It would be utterly insane if TikTok was making $5.6 billion a quarter already, but its likely not even at a tenth of that revenue yet.
- someperson 6y agoThanks for the correction. Both the cited CNBC and Reuters article made me presume the ByteDance earnings were for TikTok and Douyin combined, but I didn't know about Toutiao. Thanks again. Pity I can't update my post because it's closed for edits.