Report: Vine’s Top Stars — And Digital Marketers — Are Defecting To Competing Platforms

Multiple reports have surfaced recently stating that top Vine stars are defecting from the micro video platform in favor of competing services like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat — in search of larger audiences as well as more substantial monetization opportunities.

In addition to top creators, brands have also been looking to create sponsored Vines less frequently (the company does not currently have an advertising model in place) over the past six months, Joe Gagliese, CEO of Viral Nation — an influencer talent and marketing agency — told Digiday. Gagliese has been pushing his clients to post on Facebook, he says, where analytics are better, the team is constantly innovating new video features, and monetization seems imminent.

Research by influencer marketing company Markerly determined that roughly half of 9,725 Vine stars with more than 15,000 followers — including prominent creators like Zach King — have left the platform since the beginning of this year, according to Digiday. Another study by marketing tech company Amobee notes that user engagement on Vine has fallen by 12% over the last seven months.

The average number of loops (or views) on the top 10 Vine accounts are down 29% over roughly the last year, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Tubular Labs. And while Vine counts 200 million monthly viewers and 1.5 billion loops every day, the Journal reports, the app has plummeted from being a top 50 app in the iTunes store a year ago to falling somewhere around 200th place in the rankings today.

The Journal also notes that discussions between top Viners and the platform’s owner, Twitter — in which creators were asking to be compensated for their work — have “largely stalled.”

Some users are happy with the platform, however, and reps from social marketing agency Niche, which is owned by Twitter, told the Journal that it has conducted hundreds of brand deals for its 31,000 creators so far this year. “We thrive on creators doing awesome things on Vine, Periscope, and Twitter,” Twitter spokesperson Will Stickney told the Journal. “It’s one of our top priorities this year to give those creators even better tools across all those products, including Vine, which continues to be a place where creative trends start and explode across the web.”