What to know:
- Elon Musk may bring back Vine as TikTok alternatives gain popularity.
- The TikTok ban has shifted trends and has led to an increase in users wanting an alternative for short-form content.
- Prediction market traders are actively betting on Vine’s return, with a market exceeding $20,000 in trading volume.
Could you tell a complete joke or story in six seconds? This is exactly what the content creators of the long-defunct app Vine had to do.
Famous celebrities like Shawn Mendes and Jake Paul started their careers on Vine. But why are we talking about an app that was closed down in 2017? Because Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), has hinted at reviving the app.
After the short-lived TikTok ban went into effect on Jan. 19, 2025, only to be paused for 75 days, users were looking for an alternative. Some of these users looked to the past and believe Vine is a potential solution.
Besides betting on TikTok and what the new administration will do about the ban, Kalshi users have also been betting on whether Vine will relaunch this year. The market has a trade volume of over $20,000 and was launched back at the beginning of November 2024.
But what is Vine anyway, and is it a plausible alternative to TikTok?
What is Vine?
Vine was founded in June 2012 before being acquired by Twitter only four months later for a reported $30 million. The app had not launched yet and was released in November of the same year.
By April 2014, Vine became the most popular free app on the U.S. app store. On the platform, creators had only six seconds to create their content, which is a far stretch from the current TikTok limit of 10 minutes.
However, by 2016, creators were leaving the app for other platforms like YouTube and Instagram. The reason was largely attributed to a lack of monetization opportunities.
At its peak, Vine had over 200 million active users before the exodus of its biggest creators to other platforms led to Twitter shutting Vine down in 2017.
These four years were notable for a variety of reasons in terms of the impact on how we consume content. Perhaps most importantly, Vine eventually inspired and led to the creation of an app called Musical.ly, later renamed TikTok.
Will X relaunch Vine as a TikTok alternative?
While Vine is a precursor to the eventual creation of TikTok, why would Musk bring it back? It all started in 2022 when Elon Musk purchased Twitter.
Musk renamed the app X and in April 2024 posted a poll on his account.
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2024
The poll has 2.2 million votes and 69.6 percent of users voted yes to his question, “Bring Vine back?” On the same day as the TikTok ban was going into effect, an X user asked Elon Musk to bring Vine back, to which Musk responded with “We’re looking into it.”
We’re looking into it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 19, 2025
While Musk may have been looking into it since 2024, he may be more motivated by recent events. The top apps on the U.S. App Store are TikTok alternatives like RedNote and Clappy.
Seeing how successful these apps currently are, he is likely assessing how Trump’s return to office will affect the ban in the long term and if it’s worth bringing back Vine. Musk may be more-in-the-know than others given his new role in Trump’s administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE).
Musk has been very vocal about making X an “everything app.” Rather than creating a separate Vine app, Musk is more likely to add a new feature into X that is essentially Vine.
The nostalgia surrounding Vine, coupled with Musk’s vision for an “everything app,” suggests that the resurrection of short, snappy content could become a reality. Whether Vine returns in its original form or evolves into something new, we will have to wait and see.