Vine announced Nov. 27 they are discontinuing the app in the coming months. Vine is a short-form video sharing app where users can share six-second-long repeating video clips. It was founded in 2012, and Twitter acquired it later that year.

The small team struggled to grow Vine’s user base, which made it hard for them to make money, according to an Oct. 28 article in The Verge. The application failed to keep up with other social media platforms that added similar features, such as when Instagram added video.

The decision to discontinue the app has sparked the hashtag #RIPVINE. I have religiously used the application for the past three years and it has brought me hours of entertainment, causing me to laugh until I was near tears numerous times.

Vine has been an underrated but extremely powerful tool in the music industry, helping artists such as Shawn Mendes and Ruth B to get recognized and blow up. Songs such as “Drop That NaeNae,” “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” and “U Guessed It” are now well-known because of their features in several Vines.

Teens avidly use social media applications, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, which was why Vine was such a vital tool for teenagers to discover new artists and sounds. It was an organic way of discovery.

People use the application to follow their favorite Vine stars, as well as to discover new music. There is a category you can click to only see music vines, and this was an innovative way to find music.

Viners develop a personal relationship with their followers, causing the connection to be stronger than if you just heard a new artist on the radio. This causes the user to tune in to see if a new song or sound was Vined. Even if a Vine wasn’t used specifically to share a song, music in the background would capture the viewer’s attention and cause people to comment to ask “What song is this?”

The application that’s going to be the new Vine is called Muiscal.ly. Musical.ly has been around since April of 2014. Similar to Vine, users can create 15-second videos and choose music to be in the background. Users can also browse popular content of trending sounds and songs.

Musical.ly is a great tool for teens to discover new music because they don’t use the range of discovery apps as much as older generations do. As of a June 22 Business Insider article, Musical.ly has 90 million people in its user base already, the app is only going to get more popular with Vine out of the picture.

Record labels are constantly looking to Musical.ly when they seek to target an artist’s young fan base. The app already does a great job of marketing music to young kids, and now without a huge competitor in the picture, the app is going to blow up even more.

Phoebe Smith is a junior public relations major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at phsmith@syr.edu or follow her on Twitter @phoebesmithh5.

Published on October 31, 2016 at 7:40 pm