Musk tells Twitter engineers to bring Vine back from the dead

Rumors of a revival of looping video app Vine may be confirmed, with a report claiming Twitter owner Elon Musk telling engineers to bring the app back.

The Twitter purchase by Elon Musk has resulted in a lot of changes about the microblogging service, and even more speculation. It seems that some relating to the Twitter-owned Vine could be coming true.

According to multiple sources of Axios, Musk has ordered engineers at Twitter to reboot Vine. It's thought that a revival could be prepared by the end of 2022, though it could still be a challenge.

Engineers have already been assigned to look at the code, which hasn't been maintained or updated since the service shut down in 2016. One report source said "it needs a lot of work."

It is likely that a lot of work will be required to get Vine working. In a tweet by Sara Beykpour, a former Vine staffer who also led its shutdown, the codebase is at least six years old, and some elements are more than ten years old.

"You don't want to look there. If you want to revive Vine, you should start over," the tweet advises.

This is probably advisable due to possible API changes, security concerns, and other elements that will need maintenance before launch. The task may be simplified if engineers leverage the video-related code in Twitter, but that could be problematic in its own right.

Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

The rumors of a return for Vine were bolstered by Musk himself, who launched a poll asking "Bring back Vine?" on Sunday. After 4 million votes, the "Y" option managed to gain an almost 70% share.

The Vine move is the latest for Musk, who has already ordered for a change to the verification system to require a $20 maintenance fee, as well as firing the CEO and top executives directly after acquisition.

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25 Comments

darkvader 1146 comments · 15 Years

About 2 years ago

Just what we need, another looping video social media platform controlled by the Chinese government.

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

So he wants this done, and reports are he’s going to fire most of the staff, and this isn’t the only nearly impossible task he wants the programmers to do, and he’s fired the CEO and the board and is running the place single handedly.

Oh this is going to end badly LMAO

ophello 11 comments · 12 Years

darkvader said:

Just what we need, another looping video social media platform controlled by the Chinese government.

Um...how exactly is Vine, a US company, going to be owned and operated by China?

Why do you actually believe in demonstrably false things?

cfilipponi 11 comments · 5 Years

DAalseth said:

So he wants this done, and reports are he’s going to fire most of the staff, and this isn’t the only nearly impossible task he wants the programmers to do, and he’s fired the CEO and the board and is running the place single handedly.

Oh this is going to end badly LMAO

I'm sure you know. What companies do you own?

DAalseth said:

So he wants this done, and reports are he’s going to fire most of the staff, and this isn’t the only nearly impossible task he wants the programmers to do, and he’s fired the CEO and the board and is running the place single handedly.

Oh this is going to end badly LMAO

Well this is just false. He has already brought in a team of engineers to help. Furthermore, he's not firing useful people. There were 10 managers for every one coder. Elon Musk knows how to create and run extremely efficient companies. And to argue otherwise is either due to overwhelming ignorance, or just plain hatred of Musk. So which one are you?