Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by msmash on from the here's-to-the-hope dept.

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.

41 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Twitter May Save Vine by Selling it by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Even if the could sell it, should they? Seems like this one should be allowed to die.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  2. Bad idea. by DarkVader · · Score: 1

    Vine sucks, it was a stupid idea, and it needs to die.

    1. Re:Bad idea. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >> Vine sucks, it was a stupid idea, and it needs to die.

      I dunno. It's how my son consumes most of his professional sports. (e.g., "Who has time to wait for ESPN?" or "Did you see that catch? Here let me play it again.") And it's more conducive to conversation than a "long" 1-minute video, because everyone remembers what the context was after the clip.

      I think these little Blitverts are thriving among the generation that will soon replace the whiney millennials - I wouldn't count them out.

  3. Thousands of Cat Video Loops by Virtucon · · Score: 2

    Are jumping for joy. Actually Vine has a big following, not as big as say Instagram but still a following.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  4. 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 lucm · · Score: 1

      Your assumptions about Twitter are wrong. You can't monetize data mining because the vast majority of people post content, they don't consume content from other people.

      That's a thing Twitter has in common with perl code... it's "write only".

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:The Mind Boggles by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

      If by "love to communicate", you mean "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", and "posturing"; you can't do a lot more in 140 characters.

      133 characters. Which one is this?

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    3. Re:The Mind Boggles by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      If by "love to communicate", you mean "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", and "posturing"; you can't do a lot more in 140 characters.

      You don't use Twitter very much, do you? There's much more than this there....

    4. Re:The Mind Boggles by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      I'm talking about Twitter

      I don't know of any service that has a 133 character limit.

    5. 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.

    6. Re:The Mind Boggles by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      File this in the same folder as "Darned Millennials are lazy good for nuffins" and "Why do I have 100 TV channels and nothing on?"

      Here's what I use Twitter for. I suspect most people use it exactly the same way, despite personal experience of being the kind of person who has obscure use cases:

      1. I use it to catch up on the news. I follow a bunch of news accounts related to things that interest me. I don't mean "CNN", because the kind of news that appears on CNN generally trends anyway. I mean things about tech, and other stuff about transportation, for example.
      2. I use it to catch up with, and talk to, long time online friends. Much as we used to use blogging networks like LiveJournal before they were subsumed into social networking (Twitter is kinda a social network, and kinda not.)
      3. I use it to follow interesting people. Some people in tech, some comedians, an economist, etc. They intersperse the above with observations that are interesting, or links to interesting articles.

      Looking at other people's "Follows" lists, and you'll find a similar make-up to my own, which makes me think that this is the normal case, not some obscure thing that only a Slashdot veteran would do. Sure, others have different tastes, and are more interested in what Kim Kardashian has to say than Rob Malda (in fairness, we may joke about her, but she would probably have made a better prediction about the likely success of the iPod than the latter...)

      Is it useful? Yeah. Twitter keeps me in the loop. I could keep flipping between a dozen news sites on my browser, and another bunch of blogs, perhaps, or perhaps strip it down with an RSS reader (remember those?) and Reddit, but somehow Twitter works well as a single point of a contact, that can be easily brought up whereever I am.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    7. Re:The Mind Boggles by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      I can think of several poets who would take issue with your assertion. Brief does not equal vapid. (115 characters)

    8. Re:The Mind Boggles by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

      Your sentence that I quoted was 133 characters.

      By your own logic, it must therefore consist of "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", or "posturing".

      Asserting that brevity can only result in the above categories is ridiculous.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    9. Re:The Mind Boggles by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Your sentence that I quoted was 133 characters. By your own logic, it must therefore consist of "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", or "posturing".

      No, only by your logic. Note how I qualified my statement with "you can't do a lot more in 140 characters"? Occasionally, people say something sensible in a short message, just not often. On Slashdot and other services with threading, short messages can also occur as part of discussion threads. But Twitter also lacks threading.

      Asserting that brevity can only result in the above categories is ridiculous.

      Well, luckily I didn't assert that. Learn to read.

    10. Re:The Mind Boggles by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Learn to read: I said "you can't do a lot more in 140 characters", allowing for the occasional (rare) pithy and smart remark. Note that there are many services that do well with short messages because they have threading; Twitter doesn't have that either.

      In any case, empirically, Twitter messages are overwhelmingly "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", and "posturing". The 140 character limit, combined with the poor Twitter user interface, is a likely explanation, but you're welcome to come up with alternative explanations.

    11. Re:The Mind Boggles by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

      Yes, you qualified your statement with weasel words so you could back out when called on your BS.

      So you said nothing meaningful, and are now patting yourself smugly on the back for it. Good job.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    12. Re:The Mind Boggles by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Occasionally, people say something sensible in a short message, just not often

      Post not smart.

    13. Re:The Mind Boggles by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      I see your intellect and debating style are perfectly suited to Twitter. I suggest you go over there as soon as you can and don't bother us here on Slashdot.

    14. Re:The Mind Boggles by lucm · · Score: 1

      And how is this backwards?

      70% of Twitter accounts follow less than 10 people, 80% are followed by less than 10 people. How do you monetize that with ads? It's essentially millions of people posting crap nobody cares about and not reading what oher people post. And a fair chunk of it all is notifications from Facebook or Wordpress.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  5. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 4, Funny

    one can't thrive by merely pandering to the weak minded herd.

    *cough* Apple

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  6. The twitter monologues by tepples · · Score: 2

    Twitter has been around for a decade, and some people still just don't get it, they don't understand why people use it

    Do "people" use it, or is Twitter all just one person with numerous sock puppets?

    1. Re:The twitter monologues by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      I use it and know much real people that do this too (off course, there's a big bot/fake problem there...)

  7. 140 seconds of MPEG-4 by tepples · · Score: 1

    Twitter allows uploads up to 512 MB and 140 seconds, which is an improvement over Vine. But it still has one problem: it allows only MPEG-4 codecs, which are patented in the home country of Twitter and Slashdot.

  8. Re:Twitter is dead by fbobraga · · Score: 1

    A very used tool is far from dead...

  9. Your posts are less than 140 characters by raymorris · · Score: 1

    You seem to have missed the point. Both of your posts here are less than 140 characters.

    According to you, anything less than 140 characters is "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", and "posturing". Which of those describes your posts here? They are under 140 characters, so they must be one of the types you listed.

    1. Re:Your posts are less than 140 characters by NoSalt · · Score: 1

      Touché

    2. Re:Your posts are less than 140 characters by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      You seem to have missed the point. Both of your posts here are less than 140 characters.

      Yes, they are part of threaded conversations and a platform that supports long posts.

      I wasn't saying that 140 character messages are never useful, on any platform, anywhere. What I was saying was that a platform that limits all its messages to 140 characters is going to be predominantly filled with "trolling", "baiting", "bragging", and "posturing". That's because a thoughtful exchange of ideas requires the availability of long posts, even if some posts are short.

      Notice how even this concise response required more than 140 characters?

  10. Re:Twitter is dead by sittingnut · · Score: 1

    one can't thrive by merely pandering to the weak minded herd.

    *cough* Apple

    apple is not thriving at the moment, with iphone with dwindling market share in a mature market, making most of its profits, its only past momentum that keeps it afloat.

  11. Re:Twitter is dead by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    apple is not thriving at the moment, with iphone with dwindling market share in a mature market, making most of its profits, its only past momentum that keeps it afloat.

    You're funny. 5th richest company in the world. $177.7b in cash. 107% of smart phone profits (that's right, the competition as a whole had a loss). With $177.7b in the bank, they can take a decade off for R&D if they want.

  12. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    apple is not thriving at the moment, with iphone with dwindling market share in a mature market, making most of its profits, its only past momentum that keeps it afloat.

    You're funny. 5th richest company in the world. $177.7b in cash. 107% of smart phone profits (that's right, the competition as a whole had a loss). With $177.7b in the bank, they can take a decade off for R&D if they want.

    Wrong. Apple has about 6% of their money in the USA, everything else is abroad and essentially useless because if they bring it back half of it goes to the tax man. Apple is rich on paper but cash poor and has heavy debt.

    As for "a decade of R&D": this is exactly what they have NOT done. The first iPhone is now almost a decade old and they've done nothing but surf on that since then. They can't even be bothered to do proper QA on their software or secure their friggin cloud. Idiots with billions.

    Wonder why the economy is bad? Companies like Apple are a financial cancer.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  13. Re:Twitter is dead by alex67500 · · Score: 1

    works with Trump this morning too...

  14. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    works with Trump this morning too...

    Please summarize in one sentence the political platform of Clinton. We'll see how clever and informed her supporters are.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  15. curso NR 10 by Instituto+Santa+Cata · · Score: 1

    Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online

  16. Re:Twitter is dead by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    Money isn't useless if it's not in the USA. But hey don't take my word for it. Ask the 95% of the world that doesn't live in the USA.

    As for "a decade of R&D": this is exactly what they have NOT done. The first iPhone is now almost a decade old and they've done nothing but surf on that since then.

    Compared to what? The fantastic innovation coming out of Samsung, HTC, and Lenovo? They don't have to live up to your standards, they only have to keep up with the competition.

    They can't even be bothered to do proper QA on their software or secure their friggin cloud. Idiots with billions.

    Again, compared to what?

    Wonder why the economy is bad? Companies like Apple are a financial cancer.

    I didn't say they weren't a financial cancer. I said they are doing incredible financially compare to their competition and have a ridiculous amount of reserves. Both of those are indisputable.

  17. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    Money isn't useless if it's not in the USA.

    Apple employees outside the USA work in the retail stores or tech support. Are you suggesting a big brainstorm of those clerks financed by the 200 billions dollars Apple stashes offshore? That's your decade of R&D?

    Get real.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  18. Re:Twitter is dead by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    Apple employees outside the USA work in the retail stores or tech support. Are you suggesting a big brainstorm of those clerks financed by the 200 billions dollars Apple stashes offshore? That's your decade of R&D?

    You're right. It's impossible for Apple to say open up engineering centers in other parts of the world. After all, no other company has been able to hire engineers and build products outside of the USA.

    But anyway, I don't disagree. Apple is swirling the drain here. You've got your pulse on this tech business world. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

  19. Re:Twitter is dead by alex67500 · · Score: 1

    I could have made the same comment vs Clinton had she been elected. This election was Wall Street and establishment vs. Reality TV failed real estate mogul. And I didn't support anyone, nor vote, I don't live in the US. But good luck with your new guy. The devil you don't know, I guess...

  20. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    If you think they would move their design or R&D abroad, you're delusional. All they have is their intellectual property, they're not gonna outsource that to Ireland or Poland, and sending US workers abroad to bypass he IRS can't be done.

    Anyways there's no way they would spend tons on R&D, or they would do so already. Apple is currently spending less on R&D than Microsoft or Google, and barely more than Facebook, although they have much bigger revenue. I guess they're banking on idiots like you buying the same products over and over.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  21. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    Don't get me wrong, the Trump candidacy is not a matter of national pride, but at the same time the fact that he's been elected instead of Clinton shows that it's no longer enough to have a "I'm not the other candidate" platform. Obama was the last president who pulled that card, moving forward hopefully people will offer something to vote for, not just something to vote against.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  22. Re:Twitter is dead by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    With your business acumen, could you provide with with some hot stock tips? Sun Microsystems?

    I guess they're banking on idiots like you buying the same products over and over.

    As opposed to, say, some other idiots that base their business decisions on things like ... what, I don't even know. Not performance. Not profits. Not assets. Not customer loyalty or satisfaction. Some deep seated illogical hatred of a thing that has no personality to begin with? I dunno, maybe you were a "PC guy" when you were kid and haven't grown out of that line of thinking?

    Anyway, as much fun as it is to speculate on the nature of your delusions, I have to go now. Don't sell that AOL stock!

  23. Re:Twitter is dead by lucm · · Score: 1

    With your business acumen, could you provide with with some hot stock tips?

    Sure. Buy stock of reliable, steady companies that make money by providing something of value, not stock from marketing companies like Apple that depend on a captive audience of imbeciles.

    For instance, someone buying Microsoft stock 5 years ago doubled their money, while people buying Apple 5 years ago made a fantastic 8% gain. Companies with no value proposition are speculation material, and while it's possible to make money with volatile stock (I made a killing over and over with BBRY) it's always a bigger risk.

    Don't sell that AOL stock!

    Actually I did have AOL stock for a long time, and I made a bundle last year thanks to Verizon. The AOL stock went up steadily from 2012 and had doubled by the time it was acquired; this means that it was also a better investment than Apple stock over the same period.

    I guess you were trying to be clever but you're so badly misinformed that you just look stupid. Next time you want to end with this kind of put down, take a minute to Google your idea, it could save you further embarrassment.

    --
    lucm, indeed.