Twitter has announced that the mobile app Vine is officially slated for discontinuation.

Legacy lives on

While being definite about its intention to discontinue the mobile app, Twitter has also committed to maintaining the website that hosts the millions of mini-videos that have been uploaded via the service. Twitter says they ‘think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made’.

The move to keep the existing vines online should take a bit of the sting out of the announcement, which could otherwise have earned Twitter some devoted detractors.

Leader lost

The short-form video sharing service has provided 6-second accompaniments to tweets for three and a half years. At times, it has been the most used video sharing app, and the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store.

Many of Vine’s users have become quite passionate about it. Reviews on the Play Store already reflect dismay at the service’s demise, with one user stating that they are ‘livid that Twitter is being so careless.’

However, in recent years it has been outgrown by competing video share options available via Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

What next?

There’s not yet an exact date on it yet, but Twitter made the announcement via their blog on Friday 28 October (Australian time).  The timeline they put on it was ‘coming months’.

They squeaked their announcement into October, so it seems unlikely that the service would make it much past the beginning of 2017.

Twitter promises to notify users in more detail before any changes are made. Notifications will be made via the official Vine blog and their Twitter account as well as through the app itself.