Twitter’s plan to refocus on its core business has created another casualty: Vine.
Twitter said Thursday it will shut down its video app “in
the coming months.” The move is part of a broader restructuring in the
hope of cutting costs and refocusing the company on the core app,
something Twitter’s board has been discussing since early September. Twitter also said Thursday it was laying off roughly 350 people, or 9 percent of its staff.
Vine has been struggling for some time, so Thursday’s
move is surprising but not unbelievable. The app was never a revenue
driver for the company, and it was no longer growing.
Many of its top executives left over the spring and early summer.
What’s interesting is that Twitter is shutting the app down instead of
trying to sell it off. Or perhaps it did try and simply couldn’t find a
buyer.
Either way, Vine will soon shut down. The company says
that users will be able to download their Vine videos before that
happens, but there has been no specific timetable announced. Vine
general manager Hannah Davis, who just joined the company this spring, will stay on to oversee the transition, according to a spokesperson.
Update: Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov wasn’t thrilled to hear his former company was shutting down.