In late October, Twitter announced its plan to shut down Vine in the coming months, but after the six-second video capture app received an outpouring of support from the Internet community, it may get a second life. TechCrunch reports that Twitter has received several offers for Vine and may sell the app instead of discontinuing it.
Specific details about the offers Twitter has received are limited, but one of TechCrunch’s sources claims some of the offers are below the $10 million figure that, according to the New York Times, is the amount of money Twitter spends each month to maintain Vine. A rumored suitor is Line, the Japanese app that has a previously-established connection with Vine’s creative community.
As TechCrunch tells it, Vine’s upgrade from a soon-to-be-discontinued entity to a potential acquisition target happened because of the strong response the news of the app’s demise drew across social media. Several outlets offered fond remembrances of their favorite six-second videos, and a consensus emerged that Vine, even accounting for its lack of ad revenue and the fact that it has fallen out of favor among creators, has some remaining value, if only sentimental.
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The next step is for Twitter to evaluate its offers and decide if it wants to sell Vine at all. TechCrunch notes several potential risk factors for a sale; most significantly, if a new owner decided to shut down Vine, it could wreak havoc on existing tweets and anger Twitter’s user base. We’ll keep an eye out for the social media site’s next move.
