Version History: Vine

29:36So it bleeds more users. This just keeps happening. Instagram gets better. YouTube gets better. Vine just continues to sort of collapse. And meanwhile, Twitter's business circa 2016, not great. Ironically, it got better after that because Trump got elected and there was this big spike in Twitter usage and its relevance again, but tough times at this point. And so October 27th of 2016, which is like a week before the election. Wow. Which is sort of wild. That's really crazy. Vine announced that it was shutting down, but that it was going to leave this thing called the Vine Archives open so that you couldn't make new Vines, but you could see old Vines.

30:15And then even the Vine Archives closed in 2019. And that is the whole story of Vine. It burned so insanely bright for so much less time than I realized. Yeah. Like if you had been like, how long is Vine cool? I would have been like, I don't know, four or five years it was like 18 months yeah that's wild nuts that's so wild yeah yeah and i think i don't i don't know to me it's going back and being like okay the number of sort of almost correct ideas they had at the very beginning were like they they got most of it right right it's like the mobile video thing we can make it easy to consume we can make it easy to upload we're going to give you like more and more tools over time we're going to make this a social thing we're going to let people talk to each other revining was big and new and not something other platforms had, like they got a lot of things right.

31:02And just in classic Twitter fashion, just couldn't make anything of it ever again. But I think none of that is actually Vine's true legacy, right? I think Vine's actual legacy is the people and the Vines. And so we're going to spend most of the rest of the show just talking about Vines. So let's quickly take a break and then we're going to come back and we're just going to play a lot of Vines. We'll be right back.

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32:57It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. All right, we're back. So I think the best way to talk about why Vine actually mattered in the world, again, it burned very bright, is just to play a bunch of Vines. And so we asked all three of you to bring two Vines that you think are great or important or just funny or memorable or whatever. And we're just going to sort of talk about why Vine mattered through some Vines. Does that sound good? That's great. All right. We're just going to go around the table here. Sarah, you're up first. Do you have any preamble for the first one you'd like to play here?

33:32Okay. This one is neither important nor like this one is memorable for me. This is, I think, emblematic of what Vine was in the sense that there's something that you saw and it just stuck in your head and it's there forever now. I will say there is something magical about the six seconds in that way. Like there's nothing else that feels that way to me now in that like the sort of short clip that you can like remember the whole thing of the second time you see it. Very powerful in a way that nothing replaces now. All right. So let's let's play this one. Here we go.

34:12It's just a woman dancing with her cat. And it just loops forever. It feels so much longer than six seconds. I know. There's like a world. It's a whole world. And the cat is really cute. And the music loops perfectly. It's very smooth. Yeah, you just sit there and you keep watching. You just keep watching. And I remember like every detail of those pajama pants, the cat, the cat's belly. Like for some reason, it's just embedded in my brain forever. And I feel like that's fine. There's all these little vines. Like, I think one of my favorite things about that vine and that viner is that that's a South Korean viner.

34:49She all of her other vines, like the ones where she speaks, nothing is in English. When that vine blew up, it blew up mildly. She was like she had posted a vine that was like, look, I don't know why English people are following me now. Welcome. I don't speak English. And like she said this in English and it's like a little bit broken, accented. And then she goes on to continue posting in Korean, like 100 percent in Korean. Unbothered queen. Unbothered. And I had friends who were fans of that one Vine. And so periodically I would update them on new content that she had posted, translating the Vines for them.

35:26And that was just a thing that happened for a while. Love it. Yeah. so you just made me think of one of the other things that i think vine sort of nailed as a format is this like wordless globally accessible video like i was just looking up uh kb lame who eventually became one of the like huge stars on tiktok just making videos where he would just like silently make fun of other people's videos and he would just point at stuff and there's this like language to these videos that sort of only ever mattered once you got to the internet and anyone anywhere with no context whatsoever could see it, that all of these things started to figure out in really cool, simple ways.

36:06All right. That's a good one. Let's do, Mia, your first one. Do you want to set this up for us? This man with a Krispy Kreme hat, I think. It's a self-shot video. Back at it again. And there's no one in the Krispy Kreme that I can see, but apparently was very busy, does this crazy tumbling pass of multiple backflips. And at the very end, his feet just mash the Krispy Kreme sign and then it stops. Love it. Just watch it. Let's do it. Back at it again at Krispy Kreme.

36:40Okay. So this is one of the vines. If you had not played this for me, I never would have thought of it again. Exactly. I was so mad when I was like, oh my God, how could I have forgotten? Because a friend sent it to me recently when I was prepping for this and I was like, holy shit. Like this changed the world. Truly. I am obsessed with this Vine. It's so funny. It's one of those perfect ones that you can watch. It's like candy. You can keep watching it over and over and over. There's no setup. There's no context. Who is this man? Why is he in Krispy Kreme? Does he often flip here? Right? Like who's filming?

37:14Who's watching? What happened after the video? It's I'm obsessed with it. And this was like the vine that I remember loving, where it is slice of life, but really weird slices of life from a complete stranger. You know nothing about them, but they do or encounter something really weird and bizarre. And suddenly you get to know about it. I actually there was a New York Magazine article about this vine, which like correctly identified it as the best vine ever. And they found the guy. They did some sleuthing. And I loved the article because it gave you no more detail about why this happened. He did not.

37:59He was like, yeah, I love to tumble. And like I was in Krispy Kreme and I had someone film me. And I was like, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. That's what you need. Yeah. And he did say that the sign in fact fell, but he wanted to make it clear that he landed on his feet. He was like, you saw me. I landed on my feet. He ran away from the cops who had been called to the Krispy Kreme. And then I think it was fine in the end. But again, he did not explain why he was doing this. The back added again at Krispy Kreme. Like that is now going to be now that I remember this video. I am going to say this forever, all the time, every day.

38:39It's like part of my vernacular. It is very good. It's also such a viney vine. Like I remember one of the things I was reading in prepping for this was saying that it was like the perfect Vine comedy was not like six seconds of like set up punchline. It was like set up subversion and then the video is over. Right. And it's like you set up a joke and then you do something insane underneath the joke and then the video ends. Yeah. And it is like it causes that thing where your brain just goes, what the? And you have to watch it 25 more times. And this is like the perfect version because there's a million things you could do at Krispy Kreme that would be funny.

39:12and one of them is not several backflips and then kick the sign out. It's so good. Does he mean to do it? Was he aiming? To kick the thing? No. Magic. Which, again, I'm like, so have you done this tumble before? There's a tumbling pass before in this place. Yeah, and does that mean his idea— Because you're a little too familiar with the Krispy Kreme. Right. Was his idea just like, I'm just going to do a sick tumbling pass at a Krispy Kreme? Yes, that's it. Because that's not a good vine. I know. It's a bad vine. It's so, so, so good. It really like watching all the vines to similar to what you were saying, David, it reminded me that like combined with like the looping, combined with like the audience, combined with the six seconds, it created a new language of humor and jokes that like I feel like people still rely on a lot.

39:59It's just like there's a choppiness of TikTok. There's this like weird setup and something completely different. And you really don't need more than six seconds. It's really true. All right, Marina, do you want to set up your first one? This is mispronouncing words that you see at the store and other various locations. Very funny guy. He is good. Pronouncing things incorrectly. Anthropo - Jawalrus. Combi. Pronouncing things incorrectly. Take one dude. Hoodie Quay. Pinocchio. I don't even know how to say that normally. Pronouncing things incorrectly. Categoris. Categoris. Categoris. Dublé banana grains.

40:31Rampage. Is this like the extended version? This is a bunch of different vibes. This is a super cut. Oh, yeah. I think he had a series. Pronouncing things incorrectly.

41:02I feel like we're just watching this man slowly lose his mind. The watermelon thing at the end is really iconic. I didn't realize it was him. Yeah. The Water Malone thing is like a moment in history. Why this guy? Why did this stick out to you? So I believe it was Chasmiff. And I don't know. English is my second language. I'm an English major. So I was just, I mispronounced a lot of things. I still mispronounce things occasionally. and seeing someone do it on purpose in such a creative way. It was great. Also, the cuts are incredibly short. You barely have time to process it, and you end up reading Google.

41:53Exactly the way that he says it, because he's saying it as you're looking at it. It's just a nice little asynchronic thing. Yeah, he did do a lot of those in every single one. Yes, and if you want to see it, the Internet Archive has all of them archived in one compilation. Oh, wow. Only 72 people have viewed it so far. And you were all 72. Yes. Yeah, I like this one because it is, A, he does sort of slowly lose his mind over the course of it, you can tell. And that, which is a very like, you see this with every creator online who like figures out a thing to do. They have to do that thing. And then they have to do that thing slightly wilder every single time.

42:32And by the 50th time you do your thing, you have to just be completely unhinged from reality as you do it. and that's what people want from you and and it's great and i think it's great but this is also like to me i think trying to do like original comedy or whatever way too much work this is like find a bit and just do it a million times it's perfect it's so good it's yeah it's very good sort of like the serial nature of it also you sort of see like the emergent creator quality coming out right it's like no longer like a six second version of america's funniest home videos like you're actually seeing sort of a nascent creator.

43:06Yeah, he's like building a thing. And he goes to Khan. Like there is one where he's just said Khan reading French and correct. I mean it's a perfect bit because you can do it with everything forever. He's like he's making, he does it with naval oranges in the grocery store. It's very creative. The world is your oyster. Yeah. Mispronounced. Very fun. I love that one. Alright, Sarah, what's your second one? Alright, my second one goes down in political history. It It is Hillary Clinton doing a Vine where it's just she goes, what is it? It's it's just I'm just chilling in Cedar Rapids. This is by a mile the cringiest one any of you picked.

43:48Let me just play it. It's a picture of an iced tea. I'm just chilling in Cedar Rapids. Yeah. And then she's got her iced tea and it's got like a little like beer cozy on it that says Chillery Clinton on it. I've never believed anyone less than Hillary Clinton using the word chillin. And she's got the millennial paws in there. Like, it's like, it's really, I feel it's magnificent because it sucks so much. But at the same time, it like captures, like, she understands Vine in the sense that she understands that what, it's like not a produced Vine, right? It's like, it's got that like, gritty quality of not being very good.

44:28But then on top of that, it's also not very good. so it's it's it is really it's up there with um pokemon go to the polls yeah in terms of like cursedness of pandering to the youth but doing it ineffectually was this a thing at the time like i have no recollection of whether this oh made any way because i did it yeah oh yeah no that one's this one is this one's deeply encoded in my brain right right up there with pokemon go to the polls like it's just that one i remember yeah this is of course during an election season where Facebook is like, it was the Facebook election. Right, right. It was the Facebook election.

45:04And then Twitter emerged into prominence like in political discourse after that. But like, yeah, so this is sort of maybe even a last gasp for Vine. But for sure, like this was maybe apex. Oh, the Dems are trying to have a digital strategy and it's not quite paying off, right? Like where it really, yeah. You've got to hope that Vine is now in presentations about like how not to blow it with the kids. That Democrats play for each other every election cycle. I mean, it's like, but what lessons can you even take away from it, right? Like, it's, like, so specific to a platform that is now dead. Yeah.

45:38It's so specific to, you know, like, a candidate and her personality, right? And, like, also, like, the puns and references, like, don't really, they're all dated now. They weren't perfectly dated at the time. But it's like, yeah, everything is just so specific to that moment. Yeah. But one one thing I thought was really interesting in all of the Vine research was like nobody who was famous outside of Vine ever really figured out Vine in a way that I feel like most other platforms are a mix of like like Justin Bieber has a lot of followers on Instagram, not because he's good at Instagram, but because he's Justin Bieber.

46:18You know what I mean? But like there were a few sort of otherwise celebrities who became a thing on Vine like Ariana Grande, I think, was big on Vine. But she was also like kind of already a pop star. Justin Bieber was like kind of big on Vine, but again, was already a pop star. But like the almost everybody at the top of Vine came out of Vine, which is just that. And there is like there's something to just like the language of this thing that no one knew. And so like lots of people who started on Vine have gone on to have like huge A-list celebrity kinds of careers. Shawn Mendes is the example that makes me happy.

46:54There are a lot of other examples like the Paul brothers that makes me less happy. But there is like a who's who of YouTube now like David Dobrik was a Viner and Zach King was a Viner. And like just name after name after name. But like no regular celebrity really figured out Vine. And I wonder if that's just because there was no time to figure out Vine for these folks. Like by the time everybody realized it was a thing, it was dying. I think it also like did require some creativity and a sense of humor because the like we I think when you see a vine that was really good, you recognize it as like, oh, this hit.

47:30But there wasn't really a formula unless you were doing the big elaborate, like often kind of gross punchline joke scripted things. But otherwise, like, how are you going to show the potato vine to a celebrity and be like, so can you do this kind of thing? You know what I mean? Like it's not it's nonsensical. And that's what made it so great. You know, there were meetings where they played the potato vine and they were like, what's our potato vine? Absolutely. Like the Lay's Chips people. I hope that they were on that. But it's it's it's really hard to like appropriate or adopt it in a way that I think other platforms, you know, it's like easy to be good at Instagram.

48:05Totally. But not not so much for Vine. Yeah. Mia, I think this is a good segue to your next one, which I think did start a cultural phenomenon all by itself. Do you want to set this one up? Yeah, I think that there is a good argument for why this is the most important Vine, period. Really? Maybe some of the most important internet content, period, also. I agree. So, yeah, let's watch it and then I have a lot to say. All right, let's do it. We in this bitch, finna get crunk. Our brazen fleek, the fuck. Okay, I kind of forgot about this for a minute until I watched it and I was like, immediately, this person, her name is Kaylin Newman.

48:46And she's just sitting in her car recording. It looks like her phone is down on her lap. She's just recording. She's just like a normal girl and makes this video where she gives the world a new term, a new word. Fleek goes from her mind to being used by Denny's and stuff, like brands, by celebrities. It becomes part of the way that we talk about aesthetics. And I really wanted to pick this one because I think it's important to say, too, that like so much of Vine culture and by extension, popular culture was made by young black Internet users like black kids, creative kids who were funny and interesting.

49:24And this is just there were interviews with Kayla as well being like, this is just something I thought of when I was sitting in my car. And then people at my mom's church asked her about it and being like, have you seen your daughter's video? And, you know, unsurprisingly, like she made no money from this, even though it was absorbed into sort of like the capitalist marketing machine. And this feels like sort of the accidental virality, accidental movement thing that everyone is aspiring towards now. People are trying to coin terms. People are trying to coin concepts in hopes that it becomes something and maybe they get a brand deal or it can catapult them to having their own brand of yoga apparel or whatever it is, Lunchables, you know.

50:11But it just feels like such a beginning of like we all just realized how big making stuff online and putting it online could be. And I think it's like it really is like one of those things that I think should go in. This is version history. Like this vine only is enough to explain so much about the creator economy and the influencer industry and the way that individual smart, funny people collide with giant machines, the machinery of PR departments. It's like on fleek also just sort of entered the English lexicon. It just did. It became English. And there are a lot of moments like that in the history of English.

50:57I don't know if we have like a single definitive moment where, oh, yes, we filmed the moment this thing entered the English lexicon. Like we have a lot of places where we're like, oh, we suspect this is the first time anyone used this in this way. But no, we know for sure this is the first time. This is eyebrows on fleek. This is it. This is on fleek. Eyebrows on fleek. And I just it's like, again, we have creators, especially on TikTok, trying to do that. But all of their phrases and catchphrases and stuff, they're so long. They're like long sentences, right? They're like long bits. On fleek is like, it's so short, so concise.

51:34You can almost imagine it being French, right? It's like, oh, on fleek. Or like a town like alfresco, like something like that, right? Like it just, it fits. It fits into English. meaning yes it's not one interpret it's not up for interpretation there's no discourse cycle about on fleek where there was for girl dinner whether it's like problematic or whatever you know what i mean no on fleek is it means one thing it came from kayla's brain and it was moved it was used to move a bunch of products that's what gets me yeah it's like this person made no money from this well what's funny now is like the this is a much less good example of the thing but like you look at like the the hawk to a tiktok phenomenon and it's like the line from i said a thing that a lot of people started repeating to i made money from that thing is now so straight and so simple she launched a podcast right like this is what you do in a meme coin you you rug pull a bunch of people on the internet you like there were there were merch she got a trademark like it became all like you know what to do now when you go viral there is like a roadmap there There is like a business and a playbook.

52:40Yeah. And like there's a no chance she was thinking about that, making something like this. And B, when it happens, we just didn't. None of that infrastructure existed. And by the time you even like see what's happening, it had gotten so big and so far away from her that she didn't get what she should have for something like that. Whereas now it's like the minute you upload, it's like I have filed 11 trademark applications. And it's like we have business-ified all of this in a way that I think makes it, even when it works, it makes it feel worse. It feels worse and it almost defangs it also. Because like on fleek, because that machinery wasn't there, I do feel like it more casually entered the language.

53:20But maybe it also speaks to the power of the phrase, right? Whereas Hak Tua, that's the Hak Tua girl. You're not thinking Hak Tua something else. When we say on fleek, we don't necessarily think of her. We think of eyebrows. eyebrows we think of eyebrows looking a certain way in a certain period it's a it's a style it's like a yeah like you can casually drop it and you you know what it is without someone's face flashing through your head um because it's like it is it is part of our language as opposed to a trademark yeah and i think it really it's interesting to see um what happened with on fleek versus what happens with things like hawk to our um anything else that like people now there's sort of an expectation from people on the internet that you should own the creative work.

54:05Like, this is a creative work. And this is a thing of culture. Whereas back then, it was just like, oh, I just heard this word. I'm not interested really in where it came from or who came up with it. And now, like, if On Fleek happened right now, there would be a million outraged fans of hers that were saying, why aren't you crediting Kayla for On Fleek? Which in some ways, you know, is good that we can acknowledge that this kind of language has not just cultural value, but monetary value. But yeah, it's one of those things that is like so crazy that it happened the way it is, because right now it's unthinkable that this would just like fly under the radar, become absorbed into everyone's vernacular, and then just like the person who created it disappears.

54:48Isn't it in like 5 million songs? It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Like, yeah, like it's wild. Like it just, it happens. And there's like, like, again, this has happened in the history of English language. Like, it's like Peter Pan is the first time that the name Wendy appears. Like, Wendy wasn't a name. And we still don't know what Wendy is short for. Yeah, it's a good one. I like it. All right. Marina, what's your second one? Okay, so this is actually a nice transition because this is someone who did make money, kind of indirectly from the vine directly. But this is by Nicholas Fraser.

55:33I think you could make a case this is the most iconic vine of all time. It's up there. It's a bop. It's really good. Why'd you pick this one? So Complex tracked this guy down. And I think the one brilliant inflection point in this vine is when he's like, my God, offbeat. So they're like, how did you come up with that? He's like, I always say that. That's just how I say, oh, my God. So he got his personality in there. It's just very pure. And in 2022, he sold an NFT of this find for$96 ,000. It feels like it should be higher than that. It does. It really does. I'm like, that's kind of cheap. What?

56:14Yeah, NFTs shouldn't be worth anything, but also he should have sold that for way more. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what it's worth now. Let's see if I can find it. Well. he came up with it in the grocery store i think he heard like next close from 1997 he's like started humming the new song and just shot there's just a very pure creative process there so i really admire it and it sticks in your head i've used a screenshot of him acknowledging the lie in so many slack communications throughout the years just like oh you filed that draft Yeah, stop fucking lying. Yeah, there's a Jay Wortham tweet that's about this achieving escape velocity where the song is playing in a car and then the whole neighborhood can hear it and everyone screams, stop fucking lying at the right moment.

57:09Why do you think this became that? Like just to watch it, this is not a particularly like it's a very viney vine, but I feel like there are a million vines that look and feel a lot like this one. I mean, it's the oh, my God is like that's part of it. But like I think that when did this one drop? This was August of 2015. OK, so people a lot of lying was happening in this period. And so this was the correct reaction to everything. thing like it was this was i think the year in which lies were beyond yeah this was 2015 into 2016 you had to just reply to everything with this because it was yes you wanted people to my god stop fucking lying yeah yeah and it works and it is like it something like this hits over and over and over again and then the and then the screen the screen grab of the of the moment where he's going like that that's like it also it turns into shorthand for the whole thing for the whole six seconds or whatever like yeah and then you can just keep sending it to people on slack like yeah true meme yeah you can hear his voice when you see just the still even if you don't like i feel like there aren't that many vines maybe that you could if you saw just a still you would know what it's from other than the crispy cream one and eyebrows on fleek which is why i picked both of them um but he is like a character in and of it's himself like he's just like represents an entire emotion.

58:34Yeah, it's a really good one. All right, I just want to play two more from our honorable mention list here, and then we're going to take a break. But I feel like both of these just belong on the list of at least David's very favorite Vines ever. This one, I think, is maybe the best use of music as a visual cue ever on Vine. This is A Bunch of Umbrellas on the beach. Run.

59:02this is just like a perfect line because it's it's it's just fundamentally it's just a video of a windy day on a beach a bunch of umbrellas are just going down the beach because it's windy but it it's the the perfect perfect perfect choice of music and it just makes the whole joke and it is it is delightful i love it very much all right we need to take one more break and then we're back and do the version history questions. We'll be right back.

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1:00:16Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI. No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. All right, we're back. So every episode, we do the same questions about the product we're talking about. Today, it's Vine. Question number one, what was the best thing about Vine? Marina, you go first. It was the original version that you couldn't edit it. It was just one continuous slice of life and the repeat. I think you could make a pretty compelling case that Vine got worse when they started allowing people to post stuff that they had made elsewhere.

1:01:01Yeah. It lost the spontaneous element of it and even the fake spontaneous element of it. I like it. It's a good answer. Mia, what do you think? I think like the non-monetizable element of it where there was just no commerce involved. I think it started, I started souring on it when like brands would commission vines and stuff. And it was just like, you're not supposed to be here. Like silence brand, you know, don't post here. So when it was purely just feral children making videos. Sarah, what do you think? I mean, man's riff off of Marina's, which is like, I liked the brevity. It's like you don't see that kind of dedication to brevity in platforms anymore.

1:01:43and yeah, I think that that was something special. Yeah, I actually kind of think all three of those are sort of the same thing, which is like by some mixture of sort of the culture of the place and the like actual construct of the app, you just couldn't try that hard in a way that like really worked for Vine. That it was like, it was not, it was both gross and impossible to like do really great high production value work on Vine. It's also really hard to sell ads against six second clips. Totally. No pre-roll. just a little clip, just subliminal messaging maybe. Yeah, like a flash. You don't even see it.

1:02:20Yeah, no, I tend to agree. I think the thing that ultimately I think cost it was, A, to your point, there was probably never a way to monetize this in any useful way for anybody. Like the Vine shop I don't think would have worked in the way. Ads would not have worked. But like there was something sort of beautiful about that mess that I think you probably couldn't do. otherwise. Question number two, what was the worst thing about Vine? Sarah, you were first on this one. So maybe this was a good thing, but maybe it was also a bad thing. I'm not sure. The lack of algorithm, I think, like discoverability was really rough with Vine.

1:03:01Like it had to sort of travel with a parallel platform in order to see the really good stuff, essentially, which for me, it was Twitter. So I would... There was a lot of Twitter that was just imbeds of Vine. Yeah, and like that worked for me, but it's also like it means that this platform never is quite fully a platform for me. Right. But on the other hand, as soon as you bring algorithms into it, you get a whole other can of worms. Like, I don't even know. We shouldn't even go down that rabbit hole. Right. I think everyone who's watching this knows like, oh, as soon as you bring an algorithm into something, you've got a whole other mess of issues.

1:03:38I mean, ironically, we know exactly what it looks like. That's what happened after. Right. And it's, yeah. So it's like, and then, you know, you've got the Vine house gaming essentially the charts, but that's because there isn't like a nonstop reel of Vines that like, right, that are, that's algorithmically determined for people. But still like, yeah, I think that not having the algorithm meant that Vine was doomed to not go anywhere. And it also meant that discoverability suffered. And maybe that was in some ways a good thing, but I do think it hobbled the platform. It's a good take. I like that.

1:04:11Mia, what do you think? I think a bulk of the humor was the worst thing about Vine. The sort of more, I'm sorry, but like the popular Viners maybe were the worst thing because the polishedness, like it's very impressive. But the some of the content is truly nasty. And, you know, we were talking about this before, but I think it's interesting that in these compilations of best Vines, that content is never represented. Nobody is thinking about that stuff as being like the sort of peak of comedy on Vine. I actually went back and looked up some of these big Viners now. And some of them have like just have kids and like post nice photos of their family.

1:04:53But some of them are still doing that shit. And that was really like profoundly sad to me because it feels trapped in this era that in a lot of ways was like way worse, you know, culturally than things are now. Well, debatable. But yeah, I was like, damn, you're still doing the like girlfriend finds out she's the side chick videos. Like that's crazy to me. Yeah, they're just longer and worse now. Yeah, yeah. And you're 35, which is insane. I know. Every time I see a video of somebody who just like, you know, snap cut to them getting pushed into a pool, it's like, oh, you're just doing vines. Yeah.

1:05:31Like, that's bad. I don't like this very much. Yeah. Yeah. My answer was also going to be all of the popular vines. Who I think some of whom have gone on to have like better, more interesting careers. But just reading some of the names, it's like Logan Paul and Jake Paul and David Dobrik and Nash Greer and Lele Pons and Brittany Furlan. It's like a lot of them are not full of things. What if I was bad, actually? Yeah, right? What if Vine was bad? It's a not wrong theory, which is a real bummer. Marina, what's yours? What's the worst thing about Vine? I tend to agree. The top humor was quite bad.

1:06:07And because it wasn't an – I just wonder what would happen if that early on we combined the algorithm and the bad humor. Like how much would they have dominated or would it have suppressed it? It's like it's unclear, yeah. Because then you had your friends tell you, hey, this is a better Vine. And it's like more of a personal recommendation, which is something that I miss from social networks a lot because it's drowned out by the algorithm. So, yeah. It is an interesting thing because even at that time, like we knew about algorithms. Like it would have been easy for Vine instead of saying, you know, we're going to manually curate the popular page so that it isn't just full of objectionable stuff that we hate to actually start to do some of the work to personalize this stuff, to be like, OK, we're going to make it so that it's not just these 20 people who get to control the entire platform and what everybody sees.

1:06:55We're going to start to like make some of these changes. Like that was work Twitter was doing anyway on its own platform. It's very weird that it didn't push on any of that stuff. All right. Question number three. Would Vine have been a bigger hit if Apple had made it? Mia, you go first. Okay, I read this question and I was like, what does this mean? I honestly have no idea, but my take is that it's good that Vine failed the way it did. I think it's like, that kind of like adds to the cultural pull and the appeal of Vine is that we didn't really, I mean, in some ways we watched it wither. But it wasn't this like slow decades long drag.

1:07:37It just was like, OK, now we're not vining anymore. And that's kind of the like the cost of being early. It's like really it was really striking to me how much of TikTok is just straight Vine and how much musically was just straight Vine in a way. I mean, there's like the timing is not an accident, right? Vine died and then they just made another one. Yeah. And that's how that's how musically started in such a real way. Yeah. And I think it's good that Vine did not become TikTok. Like that's I'm happy. That's fair. Marina, what do you think? Could Apple have made Vine work? Apple would never. Yeah, I don't think that, I think like the best part of it is this like grittiness, like the scruffiness, like the real element of it.

1:08:24So I think having like a more polished platform would have taken away from that. Yeah, that's kind of where I land too is Apple is not famously great at knowing what's cool. No. And that would have they would have had a lot of like really lovely videos that no one watched. Vine would have looked like Apple TV Plus. Yeah. They look great, but there's not a lot going on. Yeah. There's music, but you're too in the background. Yeah. Something that I think is actually interesting looking at these Vines or they come is that they come from an era where it's like cheap and easy to make video where you can actually see stuff.

1:09:00But it's not yet very good. Right. Whereas if all of these were shot on iPhones now, it would just be a different quality. There would be a different quality to it. There would be a different feel to it. And I don't know if that would be good. I think they would be less funny. I think they would be much less funny on iPhones today. And so I think Apple would not make Vine work. I think that they would want it to look better than this, and looking better than this would be worse. Yeah, I completely agree. Also, Apple's history with social networks suggests that we are all correct about this. Question number four.

1:09:32if you could go back and make it yourself, what would you do differently? So we're installing the four of us as the heads of Vine circa 2012. To me, the answer is just don't sell to Twitter. Seems very clear. Start there. But then I would like to have$30 million. So I don't know. I'm torn. What would you all do differently? Marina, you go first. Leave the limitations. I'm going going to keep saying this um i think there was a notion that not having a lot of features was what was getting it down but i think having limitations in your creative work is really freeing and maybe wouldn't have made any money but we would have gotten more good content out of it that way or more different content so yeah is it possible that the right answer is to make it like 15 seconds instead of six?

1:10:23No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Are you sure? Yeah. We're sure? Okay. I mean, they told you how they figured it out. It was science. Yeah, no answer is very compelling and full of theories. It's not too long, not too short, just right. Part of me feels like, again, I think the six seconds thing is like, it is the reason so much of the things that work work. But I just keep coming back to what you're saying about politicians. It is a very specific thing to do. And it's like, if you'd make it 15 seconds and you give people, do you give people more things to do? Or is that just not the point of Vine?

1:10:56Yeah, I mean, it wasn't the point of Vine. Like, you would have to pivot Vine, like, rather severely into almost like forking it into two different products that are combined on the same platform, right? Where you've got the Vines, but then you've got longer Vines or whatever. What would you call a longer Vine? Call them super Vines. Yeah, call them like trees or something. Call it Ivy. Right. Right. And it would be, I don't know, like the way when TikTok, you could get longer TikToks at some point, right? Like in that, that shifted the nature of the platform as well. And it did make it worse.

1:11:28I hate. There is nothing worse than when you scroll onto a TikTok and you're like, oh my God, this is 10 minutes long. I know. I really don't like it. It's not good. And then there's part two. Oh, God. Yeah, it's not good. But at some point, in order to make this a thing that's more viable to bring, I don't know, politicians, celebrities, brands onto, you do kind of need to fork it also to be able to sell ads against, assuming that you turn this into an advertising business. but really the number one thing that I would have worked on would have been music like it's like the music part I think is really key I think you can see it really early on with the vines too is that like there is something about adding music to the vine that changes things and makes it stick a little more and making that smoother more integrated with like rights and so on and so forth would have I think made this have sticking power in a way that it never did That's a good one.

1:12:25Yeah. Mia, any other thoughts? Probably unsurprisingly, I would further suppress the most popular people. That was my second choice. Yeah, I would go the hype house because that is a really weird legacy to have in terms of like the broader entertainment industry of like you just are home to a bunch of really loud boys who have bad jokes. So I don't know. Maybe that's maybe that's mean of me. My other question was going to be, if the four of us are running Vine, do we sign the deal with the Viners? So I would have looked to monetize four creators in some way, but I don't think that it would have been those Viners.

1:13:12But at the point at which they levied the ultimatum, it was too late. They had already hijacked the platform, right? So you need to cut that off faster. You need to stop that and you need to treat it as though it's like similar to like a spam problem, essentially. When someone has figured your platform out to that degree, like you've got a problem on your hands because what you've got is not what people actually want to see. They've figured out your charts and that's not the same as making good content. But yeah, so it's like yes and no. I think that's right. I think you can't sign the deal. And the goal is to basically get to the point where you don't have to have that conversation in the first place.

1:13:54Yeah. Right. Like you have to figure out some way for people to make money on your platform, which is like this does feel like sort of the last gasp of not knowing that. Yeah. And we come out of Vine being dead and immediately everybody's like, OK, the main thing we have to do is take care of our creators and make them help them make a business out of this platform. And that's how we win. Like everybody learned that the day Vine died, it seems like, which is sort of insane to think about. All right. Number five. What feature of Vine should every current version have? So we're taking one thing out of Vine and we're putting it into every other social media platform that exists now.

1:14:28What is it? Make it six seconds long. That was going to be my answer, too. I kind of like the idea, like, Sarah, what you were saying about you have the Vine section and the Super Vine section. I think every social media app should have to have a Vine section. It's just six seconds and we just do it again. Even if it's just old Vines, I'm fine with that. Yeah, in some ways I like how Vine was literally just one concept rather than the Everything app, which Everything is now trying to be. Like, they didn't load it up with new shit. They didn't load it up with new features, with new buttons, really.

1:15:02And that is something that I would love to see. It's also like I really get annoyed when apps like change small things that like actually like they're constantly tweaking it and changing it. And I don't really remember Vine doing it that much. They added different functionalities, but for the most part, what it started as was what it ended as, at least technically. You can make a compelling argument that was a problem. Yes. But also, I do think there is something about the app that was great because of that. Yeah. Well, by the time they started changing things, Vine was dead already, right? Right, exactly.

1:15:34Vine for kids, 140 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. They're just flailing uncontrollably. The feature changes were like a sign of distress and not, yeah. Yeah. I think that some of those constraints, I think, should go back into these things. Because now, like, I look at TikTok and it is. It's everything to everyone all the time. Yeah. In a way that is like, it just feels bad. Yeah. We all watch it, but it feels bad. Yeah. Question number six. Is there an alternate timeline in which Vine was more or even more successful? If we do it early or later or we change something, can we make Vine work better? I think there is an alternate timeline where Vine was TikTok.

1:16:16Yeah. Like if the timing had been a little bit different, if it had been run by different people, like if they had worked out some rights issues because they had prioritized certain things over other things. I think there is a world in which Vine was TikTok and TikTok never happened. One version of this I have found really interesting is like, what if Vine ended up in the Instagram spot at Facebook? Instead of being bought by Twitter essentially as a response to that, what if… What if we came reels first and then the photos later? Could Vine have been Instagram? I think that's possible. Yeah. I think that is possible.

1:16:53I mean, you'd have to have different staff, different everything, right? If it was completely different. Yes. If everything was completely different, then yes. I think the answer might be no in that case. Right? But it's like, can I imagine that universe? Yes. How close is it to this universe? Pretty far. Pretty far. Pretty, pretty far. That's fair. Marina, is that what you think too? I just like that it didn't succeed. It had to crawl so TikTok could wobble. I don't know. Yeah. So that makes me think you think the answer is no. No. That this thing was always going to be what it was going to be.

1:17:27It had to fail. It was too early. It was like a trial run. Yeah. I think there's something to that. And I do think, again, like the industry learned so much from how badly that went that a lot of people have just aggressively not made those same mistakes over the years. All right. Last question. Does Vine belong in the Virgin History Hall of Fame? The Virgin History Hall of Fame, like all halls of fame everywhere, is nebulous and complicated and mostly based on vibes. But the question in front of us basically is like, was Vine important enough? Like in the in the annals of history, did Vine like capital M matter enough to belong in the Hall of Fame?

1:18:05And I would remind you that there are a lot of things vying for access to the Hall of Fame. Does Vine belong? Well, it's it's it's legacy is like our reality now. Like it's almost the dominant media format. So I think so. It's tricky because it's like I think you can both make the case that it was the thing before the thing. Right. And that it was the thing that invented the thing. Right. Like it's it's one of those. And it's it's it's right on the line between was it friend feed before Facebook or was it like the thing that made all of this possible? And I don't I have never been able to tell how I feel about Vine on that front.

1:18:47Yeah, I'm struggling a bit. I'm kind of leaning no just because I don't like Vine as a platform is not as important as like the cultural output. And I don't I guess like I'm not sure in version history. What is it? Museum? The Hall of Fame. OK, sorry. In the version history Hall of Fame, if it's are we talking strictly like the platform itself or are we talking like the ripple effects of it? Both? I think I'll allow both, but only if the platform at least gets close on its own. You know what I mean? Like, I'll give you cultural ripple effects as a tiebreaker, but the platform has to be, you know, almost there on its own.

1:19:26Yeah, that's why I'm struggling a little bit. It's a hard one because like for sure Vines belong in the Hall of Fame, right? Like that there is they're historically very, very significant. But Vine, the platform, it's really hard to give credit to it because, yes, there were specific aspects that made it special and like, you know, put its imprint on the content that was created. But at the same time, it was so badly run and they made so many wrong decisions that it's hard to want to give them credit. It's just like you definitely shouldn't have done it like this. But yeah. Yeah. So I don't know that that is like a it's real cusp.

1:20:05It is. I think I think we should land on no. But I think someday when we get a huge funding grant, we open the content wing of the Virgin History Hall of Fame. I think the On Fleek video gets like a wing named after it. The On Fleek video is in the Virgin History Hall of Fame. I want to say that. Vine, maybe not. But On Fleek is. Okay. Well, right now it's just like sort of in a box waiting for us to open the new building. But when we open the new building, it'll be there. Yes. All right. I feel good about it. All right. That is it for the show. Thank you all for doing this. This was so much fun.

1:20:38I have not seen this many vines in a minute, and this was a delight. Thank you for being here with us, too. As always, you can watch all of our episodes on YouTube. You can listen to them wherever you get podcasts. And if you want to support us and all of this and everything, the best way is to subscribe to TheVerge.com. We'll see you next time.

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