Elon Musk has reportedly tasked a number of Twitter engineers with working on a rebooted version of Vine.
The short-form video platform, which allowed users to upload and view six-second video clips, was founded in June 2012 and was acquired later that year by Twitter. However, its popularity waned and it was eventually shut down in October 2016.
According to Axios, Musk – who recently bought Twitter for $44billion (£38.2billion) – has assigned Twitter engineers to look at Vine’s old code base, “which hasn’t been changed or updated since the shutdown”.
One source told the outlet that the code base “needs a lot of work”.
Musk asked his followers on Twitter earlier this week if the company should revive Vine, with 4.9million votes being cast. A near-70 per cent majority voted in favour of bringing back the platform.
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
YouTuber MrBeast replied to Musk’s poll by saying: “If you did that and actually competed with TikTok that’d be hilarious.”
After Musk replied “what could we do to make it better than TikTok?”, the YouTuber said: “No one is original any more, whatever you do will be on every other platform the next month unless it has a deep moat. YouTube has shorts, Insta has reels, Reddit, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. all copied TT.
“Whatever u do make it hard to copy or it’s a waste of time imo.”
No one is original anymore, whatever you do will be on every other platform the next month unless it has a deep moat.
YouTube has shorts, insta has reels, Reddit, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. all copied TT. Whatever u do make it hard to copy or it’s a waste of time imo
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 31, 2022
Musk is also considering introducing a paid subscription service for those verified Twitter users who wish to maintain their ‘blue tick’ status.