Vine will shut down for good in less than two weeks

Alan Martin January 5, 2017

Twitter announced last October that Vine – its four-year experiment in six-second videos – would be closing down within a few months. A date has finally been set for when the service will close for good, and it’s less than two weeks away: on Tuesday 17 January 2017.

Vine will shut down for good in less than two weeks

The schedule was revealed in a FAQ on the Vine site, which also provides some more clarity on exactly what will become of the app in its zombie-like afterlife once the website no longer supports six-second nuggets of creativity. The app will transform into the Vine Camera app, which will allow you to post 6.5-second video clips directly to Twitter.

That’s some small consolation for the millions of Vine users, but it’s far from a perfect happy ending, given Twitter isn’t designed for easy browsing of video creations as Vine was. There’s also no direct way to transfer your Vine followers to Twitter, although linking your two accounts will provide a way for particularly eager fans to follow your breadcrumb trail between the two services. vine_closing_keep_followers

You can still download all of your Vines through the app or website, but only until 17 January. If you want to preserve comments and the number of likes and revines, you’ll need to download directly via the website in an HTML archive, however.

Perhaps most interestingly is that the Vine website isn’t closing when the app transitions into the Vine Camera. Instead, it will become a mausoleum of Vines created through the app, meaning you’ll still be able to browse Vines created before the cut-off point – but no more will be added. It will be as if the world stopped turning in January 2017, which may not be such a bad thing given the shape 2016 left us in.

Still, if it means that Vines like this will be seen by future generations, then I’m all for it: