Is Now the Time for Vine (Byte)?
Vine is back, and this time it’s called Byte. Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann released Byte, and in the first week it had 1.3 million downloads, 70% of which are from the United States.
Byte follows the footsteps of its Vine predecessor in allowing users to create quick six-second mobile videos. Now, Byte has some issues to overcome, such as spammy comments, but with plans to do a revenue share with content creators, Byte is positioning itself to be a viable competitor to TikTok when it comes to short-form mobile entertainment.
Vine was acquired by Twitter in 2012 and shut down in 2016. The question is will Byte follow a similar fate or is now the right time for Vine?
There are a few reasons to think yes.
Status is no longer about the updates you share. Status is what you make. The content creator culture has seen to that, and platforms like TikTok have embraced it. Social channels are becoming more focused on encouraging user creativity in the form short, bite-sized pieces of content. Look no further than the success of Instagram Stories, Snapchat Lenses and TikTok’s hashtag challenges. People want to create, and Byte enters a market full of users primed to do just that. This time around, however, Byte isn’t the only medium—it’s one of many. Whether or not that competition helps or hurts Byte remains to be seen.
Byte is new to a new audience. I’ve heard it be said Byte is just Vine, so that makes it old and irrelevant. Not true. Byte is completely new to a completely new audience. The younger users of TikTok today weren’t using or even aware of Vine when it was at its peak. Byte doesn’t need to be a new idea for the masses, just a new idea to those who matter. For everyone else, Byte is a bit of Internet nostalgia—nostalgia the Internet has been clamoring for since Vine was shut down three years ago.
Vine may have been ahead of its time. Mobile connectivity has improved massively since Vine started, and the creator culture has caught up with creator apps. Byte may very well be the right Vine at the right time.