Twitter’s video app for mobiles, Vine, will be discontinued in the next few months, the social media giant’s subsidiary announced on Thursday. Vine allowed people to post short videos – six seconds long – to Twitter, and was touted as a breakthrough supplementary feature for the microblogging site. It was bought by Twitter for $30 million (approximately Rs 200 crore) before it officially launched in 2012.
In a blogpost, Vine said that all the videos users had posted would not be deleted for the moment. Users can download them and the Vine website will remain up so people can “watch all the incredible Vines that have been made.”
According to The Verge, the move to axe Vine comes amid talks of a series of layoffs at Twitter, though officials from the company have not confirmed how many Vine employees will lose their jobs or be moved to other roles. Twitter had announced on Thursday that it is looking to cut 9% of its employees across teams, the BBC reported. Analysts said Vine could not keep pace with competitors such as Snapchat and Instagram, though its fans maintain that it is one of the “most creative platforms on the internet”.
Twitter is looking to overhaul its product with growth slowing down. While there were talks that Twitter was looking to sell out to a bigger company such as Google, it remains unclear whether this will take place. Google, Apple and Disney have all reportedly declined to buy Twitter, with some suggesting its asking rate is too high.
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