Vine fans were left disappointed in 2017 when its owner, Twitter, pulled the plug on the video-looping app. But it’s back in the news this week as one of its co-founders revealed that work on a new version is almost complete. Dom Hofmann said he’s aiming for a spring 2019 launch for the new app, called Byte.
If you’ve never quite gotten over the loss of video-looping app Vine, then listen up. A similar offering from one of its co-founders is coming to smartphones soon.
Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann said in a tweet on Thursday that his new video-looping app will be called Byte and plans go live in the spring of 2019.
Months after Vine was founded in 2012, Twitter stepped in to acquire it for a reported $30 million. Hoffman and his fellow founders must have thought they’d hit the jackpot with the deal — it certainly put a few bucks in their pocket and gave the app a chance to flourish — but five years later Twitter pulled support for the app and it closed down.
Vine’s loyal fanbase was left heartbroken, but then, at the end of 2017, Hofman offered them hope when he revealed he was planning to begin work on a follow-up to Vine. In May, however, he said he was postponing the project indefinitely because of “financial and legal hurdles.”
With Thursday’s news, it appears as if those hurdles have finally been overcome, with Hofmann and his team prepping Byte for launch in the first half of 2019.
Byte’s website describes the upcoming offering as “a new looping video app by the creator of Vine,” so expect similar features but maybe with a few extra bells and whistles thrown in.
When Vine debuted in 2012, creators and audiences alike were initially mystified as to how to get the best from it. At the start, much of the content comprised rather tedious six second clips of nothing in particular. But as time passed, a growing number of super-creative minds began to see potential in the platform and started to create some entertaining content that won over huge audiences.
Take the brilliant Zach King, whose incredible video trickery dazzled and delighted millions of fans. A collection of his videos can still be enjoyed on the Vine archive site.
Whether Vine’s most popular creators will return to Byte when it launches next year remains to be seen. But if the app gets off to a good start, it’ll surely attract plenty of fresh talent to help make a success of an app whose original version many feel should never have gone away in the first place.
