Twitter Shuts Down Vine

Twitter has announced that they will be cutting 9% of its workforce as well as discontinuing the Vine mobile app four years after its launch in what looks like a move to reverse declining fortunes.

Twitter has said that they will lay off hundreds of members of staff, as they reported a decline in revenue growth in its ninth quarter.

Vine is a video sharing app where users can share 6 second long videos that continually loop.

The Vine app which competes against the likes of Instagram and Snapchat was acquired by Twitter in October 2012, just before its official launch. As of December 2015, Vine reported having 200 million active users and more than 40 million registered users.

According to the Twitter blog post, the app will continuing running as normal but with will be discontinued “in the coming months”.

Twitter decline is due to facing some stiff competition amongst the likes of Facebook, Instagram and the fast growing Snapchat.

Social Network estimated monthly active users:

• Facebook – 1.71 billion
• Instagram – 500 million
• Twitter – 317 million
• Snapchat – 250 million

Twitter has released several new features in hopes that it will entice new users away from its competition.

The recent updates include live video, loosening the 140 character limit and new ways to prioritise posts on the news feed.  

Despite the fact they are discontinuing Vine, Twitter have stated that they will keep all existing Vines on the website.