“We’re staying on TikTok I fear”: Elon Musk announced that he’s restoring the Vine video archives, but users wonder why
Seemingly, taking over Twitter was not enough to satisfy Elon Musk, as the tech mogul announced that he is, somehow, restoring the Vine archives.
"Grok Imagine is AI Vine!" he said in an X post. "Btw, we recently found the Vine video archive (thought it had been deleted) and are working on restoring user access, so you can post them if you want."
The announcement currently has 14.5 million views.
What is (was?) Vine?
For the uninitiated, Vine was TikTok before TikTok even existed. Launched in 2013, Vine allowed users to post looping, 6-second videos. The short-form video app, in turn, quickly turned comedic, and it wasn't long until Vine became the home of dozens of viral moments that became embedded in our pop culture consciousness.
It soon became one of the biggest apps ever. It was the most popular free app on the App Store in 2013, and in 2015, at its best, Vine had 200 million active users. However, the app was eventually surpassed by competitors like Instagram, and it struggled to monetize its content and become profitable overall.
So, in January 2017, the app left the internet.
What is the future of Vine?
Since then, Vine has continued to live on in the form of YouTube compilations, allowing users to access archived Vines up to 2019. From that point on, however, nobody could access their old Vines.
It's worth noting that Twitter owned Vine, so it makes sense for Musk to have access to the Vine archive, but what exactly does he plan to do with it?
Grok Imagine is the name of X's upcoming generative AI video tool, so perhaps he is bringing back Vine with an AI twist. Or, in what is probably the more likely scenario, users will just be able to access their old videos.
Either way, his announcement certainly caused a stir online.
X reacts to Musk's announcement
Many had suggestions immediately. "Bring back Vine as a tab in the X app plz," one suggested. "Make sure there's a quick share button to DM videos to friends. This is like the most used feature on other short video platforms."
"Holy s***," another added. "Please bring back Vine."
Others shared their theories of what it will look like—and their frustrtion with Musk.
"I've thought about it, and I doubt we're getting a standalone Vine app," a third speculated. "Grok Imagine allows people to generate videos from text/image prompts, and it seems the default is six seconds. Vine videos were limited to 6s, too. So maybe that's why Elon says Grok Imagine is AI Vine."
@Geekeniero writes, "Translation: 'We need content to train our AI. Let’s pretend it’s for nostalgia."
"He is gonna turn Vine into a right wing echo chamber in no time," adds @MotionCrave.
"We’re staying on TikTok, I fear," said X user @ilovayoungroyal.
Seemingly, all we can do now is watch and wait. But knowing Musk, we'll likely be waiting for a long, long time.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s newsletter here.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post “We’re staying on TikTok I fear”: Elon Musk announced that he’s restoring the Vine video archives, but users wonder why appeared first on The Daily Dot.