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Twitter May Save Vine by Selling it (techcrunch.com)

Internet products come and go. Twitter announced late last month that it will be shutting down its micro-video platform Vine. But the fate of Vine, which has since received a lot of support, could change. Twitter has received a large number of bids from interested parties looking to buy the app, reports TechCrunch. From the article: One source says that at least some of the offers are for less than $10 million, indicating Twitter might not generate significant revenue directly from selling Vine. However, Vine could still benefit Twitter even if it's owned by someone who would help it thrive and retain the strong integration between the two apps. Vine content plays instantly in the Twitter stream, bolstering its current parent company's quest to serve more video that could attract user engagement.

2 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. The Mind Boggles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It always struck me as odd that Slashdotters in general don't understand the appeal of microblogging

    Twitter has been around for a decade, and some people still just don't get it, they don't understand why people use it (people love to communicate) and they don't understand how money is made (data mining and selling ad impressions)

    All Vine has to do to turn a profit is monetize its videos and pass a % to creators (like YouTube eventually did) hell unscrupulous YouTubers currently rip off Vine videos into "compilations" and make money from that. If somebody is ripping off the system for profit then there IS money to be made

    1. Re:The Mind Boggles by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Twitter has been around for a decade, and some people still just don't get it, they don't understand why people use it (people love to communicate) and they don't understand how money is made (data mining and selling ad impressions)

      I don't get it, but not for the reasons you listed. I understand that in theory Twitter could be useful. I argue that because people are asshats and the internet makes them even more so that Twitter will never be useful. Twitter is used mostly to insult and threaten strangers, to lie (ask anybody who follows sports writers on Twitter) and to waste time (yes, we all really must know what the Kardashians are doing 24x7). As far as making money goes, maybe you need to tell that to Twitter itself. The most recent financials I could quickly find show losses in 2015, 2014 and 2013 and there are multiple articles throughout this year talking about how nobody wants to buy Twitter because it isn't profitable. In fact their stock price got beat up in October for that very reason. Honestly I thought that by now Twitter would be like MySpace is and everybody under 24 or so would have long since abandoned it to the older folks and it would eventually die. But it turns out that young people like to insult, be lied to and follow the Kardashians as much as their parents do.