Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app • Hacker News Board

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#131

Post by mastre_ » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:47 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #82

Grue3 wrote: post #48

Never used Vine, and the videos from it never worked on my browser, but this is truly shocking. Like, Google Reader shutdown level shocking. Twitter is seriously clueless if they weren't able to make any use of such a popular service. Especially when Periscope is still running somehow. Though it's only a matter of time for that too now.

Periscope may stick around for a while only because of the current obsession with live video. As soon as Facebook gives up on live (or at least stops focusing so much on it), Twitter will follow suit and fold up Periscope. If I were an engineer on that team, I'd do some proactive job hunting.

I seriously doubt this will happen. From personal experience, I see more and more people using live on Fb & Twitter, it's even starting to engage the older generations. And from a big picture perspective, video, and motion formats in general, are definitely the future.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#132

Post by wpietri » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 2:17 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #129

dejawu wrote: post #112

What a shame. Twitter has a unique position as a key point in culture and media. It's played key roles in BLM and the Arab Spring. It astounds me that they couldn't focus in on that and make revenue from that reliable core of people that, like me, turn to Twitter before anywhere else when something is happening. But I guess that didn't raise growth numbers, and that's what Wall Street wants to see. So instead they're…

> It astounds me that they couldn't focus in on that and make revenue from that reliable core of people that, like me, turn to Twitter before anywhere else when something is happening. Yes, Twitter's role in BLM and Arab spring were invaluable contributions to history, but how much did they really add to the bottom line? Even if it was a significant chunk, how much can random external events like that be relied on to…

> how much can random external events like that be relied on to provide recurring revenue in the future?

That's the entire function of a newspaper, to transform random events into revenue via an engaged readership.

It worked on me. In my case, BLM was what turned me into a never-miss-a-day Twitter user. There was a whole set of American voices I wasn't hearing through my normal sources. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#133

Post by cdevs » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #48

Never used Vine, and the videos from it never worked on my browser, but this is truly shocking. Like, Google Reader shutdown level shocking. Twitter is seriously clueless if they weren't able to make any use of such a popular service. Especially when Periscope is still running somehow. Though it's only a matter of time for that too now.

Never drove a car but when I did I hit people.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#134

Post by adw » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:30 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #92

downandout wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Periscope may stick around for a while only because of the current obsession with live video. As soon as Facebook gives up on live (or at least stops focusing so much on it), Twitter will follow suit and fold up Periscope. If I were an engineer on that team, I'd do some proactive job hunting.

Looks pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are all-in on live video for the medium to long term. Twitter even has live broadcasting deals with NFL, MLB and NBA.

They'll lose to Twitch long-term.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#135

Post by jrnichols » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:58 AM UTC

I loved Vine. Short hilarious videos galore. Not long winded vlogs on youtube.

I'll be pretty sad to see it go. :/ I think that the time limit was great and made people quite creative with how they used the time. the ehBee family was one example.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#136

Post by mliker » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:18 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #82

Grue3 wrote: post #48

Never used Vine, and the videos from it never worked on my browser, but this is truly shocking. Like, Google Reader shutdown level shocking. Twitter is seriously clueless if they weren't able to make any use of such a popular service. Especially when Periscope is still running somehow. Though it's only a matter of time for that too now.

Periscope may stick around for a while only because of the current obsession with live video. As soon as Facebook gives up on live (or at least stops focusing so much on it), Twitter will follow suit and fold up Periscope. If I were an engineer on that team, I'd do some proactive job hunting.

geez lol. Sounds like someone got seriously burnt by live video to think that.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#137

Post by dejawu » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:49 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #132

marshray wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It astounds me that they couldn't focus in on that and make revenue from that reliable core of people that, like me, turn to Twitter before anywhere else when something is happening. Yes, Twitter's role in BLM and Arab spring were invaluable contributions to history, but how much did they really add to the bottom line? Even if it was a significant chunk, how much can random external events like that be relied on to…

> how much can random external events like that be relied on to provide recurring revenue in the future? That's the entire function of a newspaper, to transform random events into revenue via an engaged readership. It worked on me. In my case, BLM was what turned me into a never-miss-a-day Twitter user. There was a whole set of American voices I wasn't hearing through my normal sources. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Exactly. Missing out on Twitter means missing out on an irreplaceable segment of current events. That is what makes Twitter the platform valuable.

To keep its current users, let alone grow, Twitter needs to focus on being the best possible place for people to find and post that kind of information.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#138

Post by NightMKoder » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:53 AM UTC

cunotaco wrote: post #6

Instagram (Facebook) ate it. Would be nice, by the way, if they could release the source code. Having such an example of a Flask app would be very useful for the community.

It wouldn't be that good of a reference. Full disclosure: I led the backend team at Vine a while back.

Vine didn't use a lot of Flask. The main piece that was used was routing (i.e. @app.route). Everything else was custom. Even flask.g was replaced with something that can propagate context properly across greenlets (the method of concurrency we chose), without a lot of overhead. If you're curious, that piece eventually became https://github.com/mikekap/gbatchy though I can't say that's well supported now.

The main takeaway from that codebase is: async needs to be part of the language. Having it be bolted on leads to...unpleasant hacks. I think Python 3.5+ is heading in the right direction there, but Vine was stuck in 2.7-land forevermore (mostly because we wanted to keep pypy compatibility even though pypy was never rolled out; not the best reason).

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#139

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:46 AM UTC

schwede wrote: post #65

That's interesting because Vine is shockingly popular with the younger generation.

After the big Viners left for Instagram and YouTube, many viewers left with them. There were some holdouts, but instead of garnering 8 million views (what they achieved consistently before) they were lucky if they got 3 to 4 million views. It really felt like the community was dying.

Much of it has to do with monetization for content creators. They went where the money is. If the big content creators leave, what else is there for most viewers? The shrinking community also meant no one new trying to become famous would touch Vine and produce content for it.

Re: Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app

#140

Post by wastedhours » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:51 AM UTC

Earfolds wrote: post #124

Grue3 wrote: post #48

Never used Vine, and the videos from it never worked on my browser, but this is truly shocking. Like, Google Reader shutdown level shocking. Twitter is seriously clueless if they weren't able to make any use of such a popular service. Especially when Periscope is still running somehow. Though it's only a matter of time for that too now.

A majority of the Vine content I watched was compilations people made on YouTube, and a lot of those compilations have moved on from Vine, to Instagram and Snapchat. I'm not suggesting Vine was superseded per se, as its users were generating a ton of content even to this moment, but at least from my perspective it seems its main users have had suitable alternatives available to them for a while.

Yeah - YouTube wins because it directly generates income for creators, Snapchat wins because it's access to a different demographic in a unique way, Vine had great momentum and made creation easy, but never had a particularly strong USP so there's little loyalty to it as it's own platform for creators to drive traffic to.