Nearly a decade after the short-form video app Vine was shut down, Elon Musk announced on Thursday that he plans to bring it back in a new, AI-powered form. He shared the news in a post on X, though much details were not disclosed.
Musk had dropped hints about bringing Vine back ever since he took over Twitter in 2022. Over the past couple of years, he’s floated the idea more than once, even running polls on X to see whether people want the 2010s-era short video app to make a comeback.
The comeback of Vine in an AI-powered form could shake things up in the short-form content space. Most AI video tools today are still limited to producing short, snappy clips because of the heavy processing power and costs involved. So, Vine’s original six-second format actually fits right into that sweet spot. It’s almost like the platform was ahead of its time.
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Pairing Vine’s format with today’s generative AI could open up a whole new layer of creativity, where users don’t just film content but generate it, remix it, and build on each other’s ideas in seconds. If done right, this could turn X into a playground for fast, viral, AI-fueled content and maybe even give TikTok or Reels a run for their money.
Vine was one of the earliest apps that redefined how we created and consumed video content. With its six-second limit, it forced users to get clever, quick, and straight to the point whether that meant making someone laugh, telling a mini story, or pulling off a cool visual trick. The idea came from Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann, and Colin Kroll, and it gained momentum fast. Even before it officially launched, Twitter saw its potential and acquired it in 2012.
By early 2013, Vine was up and running on iOS, with Android and Windows versions following soon after. Its strength was in its simplicity like tap to record, let go to pause. That made it easy for anyone to create fast-paced, attention-grabbing content straight from their phone. The format naturally lent itself to things like jump cuts, stop-motion, punchline timing, and looping gags. Much like all things we now have in today’s short-form content platforms. In a way, Vine laid the foundation for what apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels would eventually become.
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Many now-famous creators like King Bach, Lele Pons, Shawn Mendes and Logan Paul got their start on Vine, building huge fanbases before moving on to YouTube and Instagram. Vine had millions hooked with over 200 million active users in late 2015, having grown from 13 million users by mid‑2013. As per Pro Hustle, on February 1, 2013, a Turkish journalist turned to Vine to capture and share the aftermath of the U.S. embassy bombing in Ankara, regarded as a powerful early example of how the app could be used for real-time reporting and on-the-ground storytelling.
But Vine couldn’t hold onto its magic forever. As other platforms like Snapchat and Instagram rolled out better tools and ways for creators to earn money, Vine started to lose its aura. Twitter, which owned it, struggled to figure out how to keep it profitable or competitive. In 2016, uploads were halted, and by early 2017, Vine was officially shut down.