A co-founder of Vine, perhaps the purest and least evil social media platform to ever grace our smartphones, has officially announced a spiritual successor to the beloved video-sharing app.
Dom Hoffman today announced Byte, a “looping video app” which he says will debut in the first half of 2019.
https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1060613118089445377
Precious little extra information exists regarding the app, but Hoffman did confirm Byte is the latest incarnation of the V2 project, which was put on ice earlier this year due to funding constraints and what he labelled “a bit of ‘sequelitis’’.
Vine, which emerged in 2013, allowed users to share looping six-second videos. Its deceptively simple premise eventually drew a slew of content creators, who flushed the platform with viral comedic snippets.
That’s perhaps an oversimplification: Vine, which boasted hundreds of millions of users at its peak, was ground zero for the kind of weird, non-sequitur comedy which now pervades much of modern online culture.
It also made a star of Logan Paul. Make of that what you will.
Despite a dedicated and engaged user base, Vine struggled to monetise its platform like its contemporaries. Twitter, which owns Vine, officially disabled new uploads in October 2017, but still hosts the app’s content online.
Its legacy has been profound, and anyone who has mindlessly gorged 40-minute compilation videos uploaded to YouTube would agree.
Byte is currently seeking content creators to kickstart the platform. We can only hope folks like Connor O’Malley and Thomas Sanders give the new upstart a chance.
