There are rumblings among Vine stars, ad execs, and "influencers" that Vine isn't, like, all that hot anymore, and the Wall Street Journal picks up on the story in an effort to convince us that it understands these things.
To wit:
Three years after it burst onto the scene to create a new breed of short-form comedy and give rise to a group of heartthrob stars, Vine is struggling. Marketers and ad buyers that paid creators to make “sponsored” Vines have soured on the app, which is owned by Twitter, and are directing dollars toward competitors like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Video creators frustrated with Vine have followed the ad money, and some of the top “Viners” rarely post anymore as they focus on their other social media accounts.
This is of course more bad news for Twitter, and it may just be the latest in an onslaught of stories about the fickleness of social media users, and how no one yet seems to know where all of this is going when it comes to advertising and revenue generation.
Back in 2013, the big news was the teens were fleeing Facebook because their grandmothers were on there. Last year, a Pew Research Center poll found that wasn't really the case, and Facebook was still the most used social network among teens 13 to 17, with 71 percent saying they used it and 41 percent saying it was their most used site. Meanwhile 51 percent said they were using Instagram, and at the time, Vine was being used by just 24 percent, and Snapchat, 41 percent.
Now trends appear to have swung back around in Facebook's favor as they've worked to push video and Facebook Live, and Vine stars like Simone Shepard (3.1 million followers) have thus only posted three six-second videos in the last six months on Vine, preferring to create better content on Facebook instead. She tells the Journal she's heard this a lot from other Vine stars, saying, "At one point, none of us were on Facebook. We thought it was for like Grandma. Now, the majority of us are moving and making more content on Facebook and Facebook Live."
As Digital Trends noted last month, as Facebook rolled out Facebook live for mobile, in an effort to compete with apps like Periscope, "Video" now has replaced Messenger in the core app for a percentage of users.
Facebook is trying to lure as many broadcasters and content producers as they can in this early stage saying that live video is "truly authentic" and there's an advantage to getting on the platform early. AS Product Management Director for video Fidji Simo tells TechCrunch, "We’re encouraging public figures and media companies to get in early and figure out what works."
Here's one of these early efforts, below, and in case you missed it, this guy just accidentally broadcast the birth of his child to the entire world.
