Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) To End Vine Support On January 17 After Years Of Losses

Twitter Inc

It is the end of the road for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s short-form video application, Vine, the giant social network having confirmed it will shut it down on January 17, 2017. The shutdown will mark the end of an app that has felt the full wrath of competition even on being the pioneer of short form video on social media.

Vine Camera

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Twitter says it will shift Vine to a new app it calls Vine Camera that people can use to download new videos from Twitter. Ahead of the shutdown, the embattled microblogging site is advising current users to download any of videos they might have posted on the app. This functionality will not be available starting January 17.

“On January 17 the Vine app will become the Vine Camera. We will notify you through the app before this happens. The ‘Vine Camera’ that will still allow you to make videos of up to 6.5 seconds in length that can then be saved to the camera roll or posted to Twitter, “ said Twitter in a statement.

Vine Demise

The value of the money-losing app has dropped from $30 million as of 2012 when Twitter bought it to current lows of $10 million. Vine has become a shadow of itself from its early years when it boasted of active users in the range of 200 million. Its demise has everything to do with the likes of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Instagram and Snapchat encroaching on its space as it failed to come up with new features that could have kept users more engaged.

Shutting down Vine is reportedly part of a bigger plan that seeks to reduce costs given that it costs up to $10 million a month to run the app. The shutdown of the app yet again marks another dark episode for Twitter, which has seen most of its investments fail to have the desired impact.

There is already talk that Twitter may move forth with plans to offload Vine completely. Late last year there were reports that the likes of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) had shown interest in the app before pulling the plug.

Twitter stock was up by 1.36% in Thursday trading session closing the day at highs of $17.09 a share.

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