Vine, the video-sharing phenomenon that took the internet by storm around two years ago, will soon be culled. The news took many people by surprise; the platform is incredibly popular, is owned by Twitter and is used by throngs of celebrities, but it seems that none of those elements were good enough reasons to keep it alive.

Remaining relevant

The death of Vine is by no means a unique scenario; many internet giants have collapsed in recent years, with most of them failing because of an inability to keep up with competitors. MySpace was defeated by Facebook, Yahoo! was defeated by Google, Napster was defeated by Spotify. It is a list that goes on and on.

Vine is simply the latest big name to be made redundant after failing to keep up with more innovative rivals, namely Snapchat and Instagram. These two mobile platforms, both extraordinarily popular, have been pushing each other hard over the last couple of years to come up with novel ideas and creative features, and, as it turned out, Vine was simply unable to keep up.

Unfortunately for Vine, many users became frustrated by being limited to posting videos of just six seconds. Similarly, an inability – or reluctance – to improve searchability or implement bespoke filters made Vine go from current to dated within the space of around 12 months.

The importance of storytelling

One of the key things that led to the final nail being hammered into Vine’s coffin was Snapchat and Instagram introducing their own respective ‘Story’ features. Though millions of people still love the idea of short video clips, the last year has seen an increased appetite for video clips being combined to tell a story.

By placing a series of short clips together, often taking place in different locations, at different times of the day or incorporating different people, a story can be told that keeps the viewer engaged. 

Content needs an audience if it is to succeed. All marketers – for they are storytellers, whether they realise it or not – need to stay on the ball and harness platforms or methods that can reach an engaged audience in a manner that will appeal to them. Vine’s collapse shows that even huge websites with significant backing will fail if the needs of its audience are ignored.