While the fate of the social media app TikTok is still up in the air, many users got a small taste of what it would be like to lose access to the app when it briefly shut down for U.S. users on January 19. Journalists and experts have been speculating for months about what will happen to content creators and businesses that rely on TikTok for income. This speculation is reminiscent of similar chatter in 2016 when the popular social media app Vine announced it would be shutting down.
To better understand what is happening with TikTok creators, let’s take a look at the app that helped pave the way for its success – Vine.
A quick rise and a new celebrity
Vine was launched in June 2012 and was the first social media app to make short videos mainstream and accessible. Vine’s format of six-second clips, played on a loop, made it easy for anyone to create and share content that could quickly be watched thousands of times. The app took off so rapidly that Twitter bought the company for $30 million only four months after it launched.
Vine became the fastest-growing app in the world in 2013 and gave rise to a new type of celebrity – content creators. Vine helped launch the careers of many users. Some notable celebrities who first went viral on Vine include Shawn Mendes, Logan Paul, and Lele Pons. Pons was the first Vine user to reach a billion loops on the platform in 2014, was invited to the White House in 2015 by Michelle Obama to help promote an initiative encouraging students to apply to college, and was named one of Time’s “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” in 2016. In addition to other work, Pons is still a content creator on YouTube today and her success goes to show how powerful a social media app could be for everyday individuals.
What goes up must come down?
Unfortunately for Vine, its success was short-lived. Although YouTube was clearly a direct competitor at the time, it wasn’t long before Snapchat and Instagram began adding their own video features for users. Additionally, those apps also created tools for users to edit and create videos directly in the app which made them more accessible and appealing to creators.
It wasn’t long before Vine users began moving their content to alternative platforms that offered them more, including the ability to monetize their content. As Vine was losing users, a handful of successful Vine stars pitched the company to create a Creators Fund that would directly compensate them for their work and in return they would produce more content for the app. After unsuccessful negotiations, the creators walked away from the app, taking their followers with them and cementing Vine’s demise.
Lessons learned
Despite making careers on Vine, many Vine stars have been able to outlive the death of the app because they were proactive and adapted their business models for multiple other platforms. By diversifying the platforms they were using, creators maintained more control over their income because they were not subject to the whims of any one app. In response to Vine shutting down, one user noted, “It’s a really sad moment. It really shows you can’t base your entire career on one app because it can change within seconds.”
We will still have to wait and see what happens to TikTok, but many TikTok stars are taking the lesson learned by Vine users and ensuring they have other options. Apps have also appeared to have learned from Vine’s mistakes, not only by introducing tools and funds to cater to content creators that make the app successful but also by listening to feedback and adapting to the ever-changing world that is social media.
