In June 2012, the trio of Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll created Vine, a mobile app that allowed users to create and post looping 6-second clips. In October of the same year, Twitter bought Vine for a reported $30 million. It did not see a public debut until it reached the App Store in January 2013, and the rest is history.
Despite its novel concept, it became the most used video-sharing app on the market in a matter of months, and in April 2013 became the most downloaded free iOS app.
In May 2014, an official Vine website
was started to make exploring Vines more convenient.
Nothing lasts forever, though. In October 2016, Twitter announced that it would eventually shut down Vine and discontinue its app, but after outcry and negotations with creators, it will continue to live on in the future with an app called Vine Camera, allowing users to continue making 6-second-long looping videos, but they will be directly uploaded to Twitter rather than Vine's dedicated site/app.
TikTok has become Vine's Spiritual Successor as the launch pad for memes and viral videos; however, Hofmann launched a competing app originally called Byte in 2020, which was subsequently rebranded as Clash in 2021 and as Huddles in 2022 before being shut down in May 2023.
