7 ms·

Did twitter killed Vine because it didn't make money despite being popular?

• Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Hard to say what their motivations were. I'm not Jack Dorsey. If I were being cynical I would think their main motive was to buy out and kill a competing platform. After all, it's much simpler to record soundbites than type them out. In the long run, if left to its own devices, Vine might have slowed Twitter's own growth and displaced it. Another possibility is that the purchase was justified to Twitter's investors as adding a Youtube-killer to the portfolio and when that didn't pan out, Twitter decided it wasn't worth financing nor was it worth letting go and killed it before it got a chance to demonstrate its value on the market. However, I'm more of the position that the Vine buyout was a hedge against Facebook after the latter had acquired Instagram a few months in advance of the Vine purchase. If Snapchat CEO Evan Speigel is to be believed, Zuckerberg has a history of making we'll-buy-you-or-break-you deals[1]. It seems like Vine was in a position where if it didn't sell early, it would quickly go bust on its own or be reduced to a 404 by a Vine-like feature implemented on Facebook proper. Combined with the Twitter's urgent need for a competitive advantage, Vine would have more leverage in a negotiating with Twitter in a mutually defensive bid against Facebook than it would standing on its own. But once it no longer became necessary to hold on to Vine anymore, either because of the Periscope purchase or because Facebook was no longer considered a threat, Vine was no longer worth keeping alive. However, these are all speculations. So take everything I have with a heap of salt. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/evan-spiegel-and-mark-zuckerbergs-emails-2014-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/evan-spiegel-and-mark-zucker...