VINE MAKES ITS LONG-AWAITED COMEBACK AS BYTE

Remember Vine? The popular 6-second looping video sharing app was shut down in 2016, but co-creator Dan Hoffman promised that he’d be back with a follow up app and now, at long last, Hoffman has stayed true to his word with the release of Byte – essentially Vine 2.0. Like the Vine of old, users have to upload a video from their camera roll or use the app’s camera to capture videos that are under the six-second time limit. However, learning from Vine’s mistakes, Byte says that it will introduce a pilot partner programme to help creators monetise their content, and this will be key in luring creators as major competitor, TikTok, has no such programme.

It could be said that Vine laid a blueprint for the likes of TikTok in terms of super short-form video content, but since Vine’s popularity in the early 2010s, a lot has changed. The likes of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok all have creators who have built large, dedicated communities on these platforms. Will Byte be able to challenge these major players? The answer is probably not, although it could make them think more about how Byte can pay creators. Certainly, the launch of Byte adds more credence to the belief that the short-from video content model is the future of social and it will be interesting to see if Byte reaches the heights of Vine, especially with TikTok as such a key competitor.