RIP Vine

by Filed Under: Blog

That’s right, if you haven’t already noticed, Vine is officially dead and the internet is going crazy. Yesterday, Twitter announced it will be shutting down Vine in the next coming months. Unfortunately, the company was not able keep up with its competitors as users had left the app for Snapchat and Instagram. On the same day, twitter also announced that it will be laying off 9% of their employees.

What’s Vine?

In 2013, a new social networking app called Vine launched to the public. The app worked by allowing users to upload short video clips to create a six-second video loop. Vine is responsible for some of the world’s top social media stars (like Andrew Bachelor, Jessi Smiles, and Shawn Mendez) and gave birth to the latest internet trends (“Damn Daniel”, “on Fleek”, and “What are thooose”.) The app could be linked with users’ Twitter accounts.

What Happened?

Although Twitter didn’t give us an exact answer as to why it killed Vine, there are a few theories we can come up with. Yes, money is the biggest factor, but who lies behind money? Social media users. Many people became popular with vine logotheir video postings, but were quick to move their postings to other social platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, which all allowed for more than 6 seconds of video viewing. Vine tried hard to outwin Instagram and Snapchat, but slowly fell behind. When it comes to social media, users want higher views with ease of use. Another factor to consider is that Vine couldn’t access your Facebook friends, camera roll, or social sharing options. This means that you have to make your own vine and hope to get views on it, rather than uploading videos and pictures from your camera roll. Most of the popular social media sites today give you the option to connect to your Facebook or post pictures from your phone. It makes it a lot easier and quicker to share with the internet. Vine didn’t allow for these options and quickly started to see a decline in users. In other words, in the evolution of social media and technology, Vine officially hit the bottom of the food chain and will now be extinct.

Now What?

All good things must come to an end, right? Sort of. While Twitter announced it’s plans for shutting down the app, they also mentioned that nothing will happen to the accounts for a few months. This means people are still able to access and download their vines, and watch others. The internet is not happy to see Vine go, so maybe there’s a small chance to make a comeback through views and shares. Twitter also announced the termination of over 300 employees. The stock price has also declined massively over it’s lifetime. The problem is that Twitter is having a hard time making a profit. There have been talks of selling Twitter to companies like Google and Facebook, but both walked away from the deal. Unless Twitter can come up with a new business plan (like hiring a new CEO), the company will continue tweeting its way down into irrelevancy over the next few years.

Turkey Twitter Ban Angers Tech Savvy

by Filed Under: Blog, Internet

Demonstrators, members of Turkish Youth Union, shout anti-government slogans during a protest against Twitter ban, in AnkaraThe Prime Minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan has banned Twitter from his citizens to stop them from accusing him of being corrupt via the social networking site. However, the Turkish people are thriftier and tech savvy than Erdogan originally anticipated. In fact many Turks are so angry that Erdogan is limiting what they can access on the internet that those who knew nothing about things such as VPN or DNS are trying to learn more to get back at the government.

The reason that Erdogan is so threatened by the microblogging site that citizens have been exposing his corrupt dealings through audio tapes of his family and businessmen. These have been released on Twitter right before important elections for the country on Sunday. The Prime Minister has accused opponents of manipulating the audio to frame him and smear his campaign… and then he attempted to ban Twitter. As the government tries to shut down avenues of communication to those who oppose, tech savvy citizens continue to find new ways to communicate to large groups of people. The result of this cat and mouse game is a kind of censorship arms race, each trying to outsmart the other for their own means.

Frist citizens tried to change domain names to route their internet use to different servers and thus avoid the ban. When the government caught on citizens then tried VPN software hotspots and TOR software. It is important for Turkish citizens to continue to adapt and fight the ban by continuing to tweet and use YouTube. It is almost impossible to censor an entire nation and as long as they keep moving and adapting, Erdogan will never be able to stop his critics.