Vine Is Back! New App Wants To Take On TikTok And Prioritise Creators

Short-form video sharing platform Vine has been revived, after co-founder Dom Hofmann launched remake ‘Byte’ last week.

Vine, which showed six-second videos on loop, was hugely popular around 2014 and 2015 and arguably paved the way for today’s social media sensation TikTok.

It was ultimately shut down by Twitter (which acquired Vine in 2012) in 2016.

But now it is well and truly back, with Byte already recording over a million downloads in the first week alone.

Byte, which still uses the six-second format, has so far received mixed reviews.

It is already facing criticism over problems with comment spam, pornbots and content moderation.

But this wasn’t enough to dissuade Nike, which yesterday launched the first ad campaign on the platform.

byte's first ad campaign is live and we did it with @nike. i'm *really* proud of our collaboration. the creative is amazing and nike‘s focus on movement and fun is a perfect fit for our first step into this world pic.twitter.com/I34iRGFFvS
— dom hofmann (@dhof) February 1, 2020

Like any social media platform, advertising will be key to the long-term viability of Byte, which is joining an increasingly crowded market.

Byte has said it will do advertising “a little differently”. There will be no ads based on retargeting, nor will there be any ads in the ‘following’ feed.

“The brand campaigns you see on byte will celebrate creativity and community, just like the features and programs we build,” said Byte on its community forum.

However, the new app has vowed to take an initial hit to the pocket to help promote growth on the platform.

Byte will give 100 per cent of its ad revenue to content creators during the initial pilot period.

“We believe that more evenly compensating a greater number of creators will contribute to a healthier, more creative community,” said Byte.

“We hope this model will address issues of incentive and inequality that we see in other models (e.g. pro rata).”

While the 100 per cent ad revenue guarantee for creators is only for the pilot period, Byte says the long-term plan is to have the “majority” of revenue go back to creators, with the minority being used for operations and business expenses.

Byte is using a Partner Program to distribute the revenue, where creators must be added by invitation.

From here, a Partner Pool will be calculated every 120 days and then paid out to creators in four 30-day instalment periods.

Creator’s pay will be calculated based on viewership.

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