Vine No More
Article Link: https://www.theringer.com/tech/2017/11/2/16593166/one-year-without-vine
It has been a whole year since Vine was shut down, and in this short period of time, we have really began to see different social media platforms begin to merge their designs. Perhaps, as this article argues, this is why Vine’s downfall was so tragic: it was the only unique, innovative platform, and for the same reason, users swarmed towards the other options.
If we look at the four main social media platforms today, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we will notice that they have grown to be quite similar. Snapchat was the first to introduce this concept called a “story.” Facebook and Instagram both quickly caught on and introduced their own versions of the “story.” For other reasons similar to this example, the content we share has begun to feel interchangeable; there are fewer and fewer differences between how we post content and what content we choose to post on these different platforms. After analyzing the different social media platforms dominating the industry today, the article further raises an important question at the end: is it possible for Vine to make a comeback?
In theorizing whether it is possible for Vine to make a comeback, we can think about the two different reasons individuals would or would not participate in crowd behavior: information-based and direct-benefit reasons. Information-wise, potential users can observe that Vine was shut down and no one is using it anymore. From this, then can then deduce that Vine was shut down for a reason; perhaps it wasn’t that entertaining or had poor design. Thus, there is then no information-based reason to begin using Vine again. Direct-benefit wise, users would benefit from how entertaining the platform was if other users also used it. However, in this case, since no one is using Vine anymore, there would be no direct-benefit reason to use it once more. From this analysis, we can truly see that Vine is gone once and for all.