Twitter is killing Vine on January 17, but app will live on

By

Vine-logo
Bid farewell to Vine.
Photo: Twitter

Twitter has confirmed that it will be shutting down Vine on Tuesday, January 17. Users have until this date to save their videos before they all disappear, while the Vine app for mobile will live on as a simple camera client.

Twitter first announced its plans to kill Vine last October, just four years after purchasing the company. At its peak, the service was a hit, becoming the most downloaded app for iOS with more than 200 million active users.

However, fans quickly got bored and Twitter did little to reignite interest. The latest data from App Annie shows Vine rarely makes it into the top 400 free apps in the App Store these days, and it hasn’t featured in any top charts since 2015.

Twitter didn’t tell us exactly when it would be closing Vine initially, but it confirmed today that the service will be shutdown on January 17. When this happens, the Vine apps for Android and iOS will become Vine Camera.

https://twitter.com/vine/status/816734066871533569

You’ll be able to use Vine Camera to record short videos just like you did before, but you won’t be able to share them with the Vine community. Instead, you can upload them directly to Twitter, or save them to your camera roll and upload them to other services from there.

The Vine website will also live on for now, serving as a read-only archive of all the videos that have been uploaded. However, it is recommended that you go download any videos you want to keep hold of before that goes, too.

In addition to downloading Vine videos from the website or using the mobile app, you can also convert them to GIFs using a handy tool offered by Giphy.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.