A lot of fans were devastated back in October when Twitter announced that it is going to completely kill off Vine. In fact, Vine trended on Twitter and many had expressed their grief through social media platforms. Now, Vine will apparently live on as the new Vine Camera app. The toned-down version of the beloved app will be available to use in January.
According to a post on Vine’s website, the Vine Camera app will still retain the usual features of the old app. This means that you can still make six-second looping videos. You will either be able to post them directly to Twitter or save them to your device. Though it is not specified on what platform it will be available. According to the Windows Central, it is likely that Windows 10 devices will be able to support the Vine Camera app. Vine launched its app on Windows 10 back in May.
Vine is also rolling out other updates. Users can now download their Vines through the app or by going to the website. It was previously reported that despite the initial announcement of Vine shutting down, users were told that their Vines will still exist on the vine.co website. This allowed them to browse all the videos they made since the birth of Vine.
Users should also expect an easier way for their Vine followers to follow them on Twitter. Apparently, Vine will be integrating a “Follow on Twitter” feature on the app. Check out Vine’s website, app and Twitter account for updates.
With this news, it is unclear if Twitter will pursue on selling Vine. This was first reported by TechCrunch back in November. According to multiple sources, Twitter actually received a large number of bids to buy Vine. It was rumored that one of the companies interested to acquire Vine is the Japanese messaging company LINE. The last count indicated that there were only five bidders left. According to the Digital Trends, the tech giant had offers that only amounts to around $10 million.
Twitter had acquired Vine for $30 million in 2012. The company is having a tumultuous year so far. Twitter is still struggling in making itself profitable and growing its users. Back in October, there was a news that several companies were in talks with the social media platform to buy it. However, it became evident that Disney and Google eventually decided not to make a bid. Later on, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told the Financial Times that the cloud computing company was no longer interested in acquiring Twitter.