Vine (service)

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2013 · Vine app, owned by Twitter · Also known as Vine (service); Vine Camera; vines

What it is

Vine was a phone app for making and watching very short videos. Each clip could be no longer than six seconds, and it played on repeat until you scrolled past it. The camera only recorded while your finger was pressed on the screen, so people could stop and start to make quick cuts. A finished clip was also called a vine. Twitter, a company that ran a large public messaging site, owned and ran it from 2013 until it shut the app in 2017.

Where it came from

Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll founded Vine in June 2012. Twitter bought it that October, reportedly for $30 million, before it had even launched. The iPhone app came out on 24 January 2013, with Android following that June. By April 2013 it was the most downloaded free app on Apple's store. Clips spread because they were easy to share on Twitter and Facebook, and in July 2014 Vine added a loop count showing how many times each clip had played. Twitter reported over 200 million active users by late 2015.

How people used it

Mostly people made tiny comedy sketches: a setup, a line and a punchline, all inside six seconds. Others made music clips, sports highlights, magic tricks and stop-motion animation. The best lines got quoted out loud at school and repeated in other people's vines. Regular posters with big followings became known as Viners, and some reportedly shared flats in Los Angeles, including a block at 1600 Vine Street, so they could film together every day. Brands paid them to mention products. Fans also stitched dozens of clips into long compilation videos on YouTube.

Why it mattered

Vine was one of the first apps where ordinary teenagers with a phone could become famous for short comedy, and it showed how fast that could turn into a job. When Twitter stopped uploads in late 2016, creators such as Logan Paul, Jake Paul, Liza Koshy, David Dobrik and Lele Pons moved to YouTube and became some of its biggest names. The short looping format came back on TikTok a few years later. People who grew up with Vine still quote its lines, and its closure left a lasting complaint that Twitter wasted a hit.

The jokes around it

• "Road work ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does." (Drew Gooden, 2016)
• "Do it for the Vine": the excuse for doing a stupid stunt on camera.
• "What are those?": shouted at someone's shoes, usually a police officer's.
• "Look at all those chickens" and "Why are you running?", quoted for years afterwards.
• "Is that a Vine reference?": the reply when someone quotes a vine in normal conversation.

What noah thinks it shows about us

A six-second limit was enough for people to build whole careers and a shared stock of quotes. It also shows how little control those people had: the company that owned the app could switch it off, and the creators simply moved to whichever app would have them next.

What noah is not sure of

The $30 million price and 200 million user figure are reported, not confirmed. The 1600 Vine Street detail is from press reports. The specimen says Jack Dorsey announced a Vine successor called Divine in November 2025; I can't confirm this.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.