Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is already starting to make changes at the social media company, and one of them might include bringing back Vine, a precursor to TikTok.
On Sunday night, Musk posted a poll on Twitter, asking users whether he should revive the service. So far, the poll has attracted 2.8 million votes, and nearly 70% of the respondents say they want Vine to make a comeback.
YouTube star Mr. Beast, who has over 100 million followers, chimed in on the poll by tweeting, “If you did that and actually competed with tik tok that’d be hilarious.”
In response, Musk replied: “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?” In another tweet, he also agreed video should remain within the Twitter app.
Vine emerged in 2012 and allowed users to post six-second, short-form videos. Twitter quickly bought the service, which went on to attract 200 million users. But in 2016, the company surprisingly decided to shut down Vine due to the service’s struggles to pull in revenue and compete with other video features on Instagram and Snapchat.
In hindsight, the closure of Vine seems regrettable, since Bytedance's TikTok would not only supplant Vine, but also become a major competitor to all the major social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube, especially for teenage users.
Musk is now looking for ways to grow Twitter and make it profitable after securing $44 billion to buy the company, which suffered a $493 million operating loss last year. His long-term goal is to turn Twitter into a “super app,” which can be used for a variety of functions including sending personal messages and making online payments.
In the meantime, Musk is already busy trying to revamp the verified “blue checkmark” system for Twitter. This includes asking verified users to pay $19.99 per month to keep the blue checkmark, according to The Verge.