Elon Musk, the Chief Twit, has expressed interest in resurrecting Vine

 image credit : Elon Musk Zone

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has expressed an interest in resurrecting Vine, the social video service that Twitter abandoned six years ago.

In the last several hours, the self-styled "Chief Twit") has tweeted a yes/no poll to his 112.4 million followers, asking simply, "Bring back Vine?"

The question soon received millions of votes (mostly in favor) and hundreds of answering tweets. This conversation drew Musk's notice, who answered to some of his followers' questions/suggestions on the issue of social video. 

In response to a joking TikTok allusion from YouTuber Mr Beast, Musk took a serious tone, asking, "What could we do to make it better than TikTok?"

He also took the opportunity to openly concur with another Twitter user, who stated that "video shouldn't be a separate app," but rather "inside Twitter." Musk responded to the 'Tesla Owners Silicon Valley' account with a '100' emoji, indicating (apparently) absolute acceptance of the concept that any Vine/video rebirth should be a feature within Twitter, not a distinct product.

So take what you will from it.

The Vine revival poll (along with Musk's wider engagement with the chatter it generated) could imply his interest in video is genuine — though it's unclear whether a Vine reboot is being seriously considered, or what that would even mean beyond reviving a brand name if his plan includes a major feature set makeover. (Requests for response from Twitter's press office were not returned.)

Musk may be doing the equivalent of flinging spaghetti at a wall to see which/if parts stay. Or he's simply bored in the wee hours and thought he'd bounce another shower idea off his followers. And/or wished to engage in some 'lazy online' brainstorming outsourcing.

The usual restrictions apply when it comes to Elon.

Still, Vine's death was a rather self-defeating chapter in Twitter's history, so a relaunch might give Musk the opportunity to rewrite that chapter and claim new hero status with former Vine lovers.

More than 2.8 million votes had been cast in Musk's poll regarding bringing back Vine at the time of writing, with a large majority (69.4%) opting for a return – despite the fact that the poll still had 14 hours to go.


In 2013, Twitter purchased the short-form video platform Twitter. However, in true clown car manner, the firm squandered the potential to turn the embryonic social video platform into a TikTok-style phenomenon after then-CEO Jack Dorsey chose to abandon the app a few short years later.

Vine's demise garnered Twitter the most blatant of subtweets from Vine's creator, Rus Yusupov, who had this direct advice to fellow entrepreneurs at the time: "Don't sell your firm!"

Ironically (knowing that *Twitter* has already been sold), Yusupov has joined the Musk-initiated talk about resurrecting Vine, suggesting (jokingly?) that Vine could include "69 second videos."

While Vine launched with hyper-short videos (up to 6 seconds), the maximum upload length was later expanded to 140 seconds — and social video behemoth TikTok has gone far beyond that, even allowing users to upload videos up to 10 minutes long earlier this year — so 69 second videos are likely an attempt to catch Musk's attention (with a puerile joke), rather than a serious product suggestion.

Regardless, the conversation shows that Yusupov is paying attention to what's going on at Twitter.

That's significant since this isn't his first time tweeting to Musk about Vine: His public timeline is still dominated by a previous tweet — from April 25 — in which he shared a photo of himself with the (then) would-be Twitter owner, posing a (rhetorical?) query to Musk: "Hey @elonmusk, was this meeting for preserving Vine?" "I forgot..."

There was no public response from Musk to that tweet. But, again, the Chief Twit is the master of keeping everyone else guessing about what he's going to do next, so you can't read much/anything into his public quiet back then. (Musk also tried to back out of purchasing Twitter before agreeing to close the deal last week; so, there have been a lot of ups and downs even in the previous few months.)




If Yusupov and Musk have been discussing a Vine reboot, the former's response to another Twitter user's question last month — when author Eli Pariser asked the Twitterverse for "the smart take on why Vine died even though it was basically TikTok" — could provide some hints as to what any discussions might have been about.

The Vine founder responded to Pariser by lamenting not having built the right features "on time" — which is likely related to another blindspot he admitted about not understanding the importance of building on trends like lip-sync video — and blaming the app's demise on a failure to help creators monetize.




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