With Vine about to discontinue its app, what is next for its community of content creators?
Remix is a part of modern digital life, and it is not going away. In his 2007 TED Talk “Laws that Choke Creativity,” Lawrence Lessig, an attorney and activist, explained digital remix’s generational gap: “We made mixed tapes; [our kids] remix music. We watched TV; they make TV.” Since that time, digital content creation has become a subject of even more intense debate, scrutiny, and breadth. Vine, since it began in 2013, has been a constant producer of exactly the kind of remixed content that Lessig references.
However, in October 2016, Twitter (in the midst of financial cutbacks) announced that in the coming months, it will be discontinuing the Vine app. With this platform for remix soon disappearing, will Vine’s type of remix disappear as well? Though lists of “Vine replacements” have made the rounds online, I consider these apps to be some of the more prominent avenues that Vine’s content creators may take.
Coub
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Like Vine, Coub is a platform for making looping videos. It was actually launched six months before Vine, but since it began in Russia, it has not taken off in the U.S. in the same way as Vine (Sivertseva).
A Coub may be up to 10 seconds long (as opposed to Vine’s 6 seconds). Coub allows for remix by letting users choose video content from YouTube, Vimeo, or their own device. Especially with YouTube, users could run into copyright issues through remixing material on Coub. Also, unlike Vine, this is a browser-based app, meaning that users can create a Coub on their computer rather than their phone.
Though it is the platform that is the most like Vine in terms of content, editing capability, and functionality. Coub has more specialized features than Vine. Coub advertises the capability to make photos that appear to move, 360° video to show off products, and animation among its features. All of this, they claim, makes Coub an ideal platform . The front page of their website reads, “Make a video loops from YouTube, GIF, Vine, your phone, whatever. Mash them up, add a cool soundtrack. You’re the boss here.” The focus on the individual here stands in contrast to the community approach that Vine took, calling itself “the entertainment network where the world’s stories are captured, created and remixed” on both the Apple and Google Play stores.
Despite its similarity to Vine, Coub does not seem to be as popular as Instagram among migrating Vine users and content creators.
Instagram is best known as a photo sharing platform, but since adding video to its app, it has become an increasingly popular channel for posting videos. Some Vine users posted content on both Vine and Instagram before it was announced that Vine was being discontinued; now, they post there exclusively.
Though Instagram offers filters and photo editing software, it does not offer much in the way of video editing or remix. What it does offer is an established platform, one many people already use, and the capability to upload already-made video. What Instagram does not offer is Vine’s signature looping feature, much to the dismay of Vine devotees.
YouTube
The internet video giant may seem to be a logical next step for Vine creators, and many users create longer content for YouTube already, but YouTube is obviously not the ideal platform for the short videos that made Vine so appealing. While users from Vine have migrated to YouTube, it is not the platform where the type of remix being done on Vine could reemerge.
Hype
The creators of Vine recently launched a new app called Hype: Interactive Live Video. Hype has many of the same community focused aspects as Vine, and the same creators, but certainly not the same audience. However, it does raise an interesting question of how one can remix live content by making it interactive. Hype does not have much of a web presence since it is completely a mobile app. Though it is not likely that Hype will at all take up Vine’s mantle, it is interesting to consider what app developers are looking toward for the future.
Further Research
As Vine slowly declines and eventually stops producing content, it will be harder to examine its user culture and ethos. However, its videos will still be available. I believe it is imperative to examine the collaborative remix that Vine helped make so popular, and further research may lead me both to tracing its origins and charting its future. I have attempted to make a start here.
Another way I would like to continue this research is through closely examining individual tags, channels, and trends, to evaluate what becomes popular on Vine and what marks its rise. Further, how does this information get disseminated across different platforms?
Finally, usability studies of Vine and its potential competitors and/or successors could give insight to how users are making content online, remixing it, and rebranding the type of remix they are performing.