Twitter users were probably not expecting Vine to make it's return today, but welcome to 2020 where nothing makes a ton of sense. Well, let's get one thing out of the way, it's technically not Vine, but more like a spiritual successor called Byte. Dom Hofmann was a co-founder of the millennial favorite video app before it got absorbed by Twitter and shuttered. The entire course of events left a lot of people shook online when it happened. But, now, you can get that six-second hype back on the new platform. Before too long, social media users that missed the extraordinarily silly videos that Vine used to churn out had to see what all the fuss was about for themselves.
While other challengers to the throne like Tik Tok and Snapchat have emerged in Vine's absence, it remains clear that there had to be some affinity for the types of stories and jokes from the older platform. (We'll just put a pin in the fact that Vine never really needed to go away at all, but that's a story for another time.) 1-minute clips and endless videos that disappear into the ether just won't cut it for people that need that short burst of surreal content that Vine was so good at bringing to the table.
As of right now, there's no augmented reality filters, transition effects or other cool extras that now come standard on these social media platforms. But, what is there is what made Vine so appealing in the first place, and that is the brevity. Just like when Twitter used to have the 140 character limit, the constraints of format forced people to be creative. It is no wonder that a lot of the changes to the blue bird app have had the effect of both enabling new expression with absolutely laying waste to some old joke formats. A side bonus of Byte's emergence is that a new crop of social media users get their chance to flex their muscles on the platform.
Weirdly enough, all those hilarious Vine videos actually have found second and third life on other platforms. There are compilations of hilarious Vines all over YouTube with millions of views and robust comment sections. As Twitter integrated more video, the best random Vines became reaction fodder for the site as jokes that could have been almost a decade old sprung up to have a second life. All this is to say that Byte existing again is probably a good thing and the nostalgia, in this case, is good. It will be interesting to see if any of the stars who had moved on from the platform after its shuttering will be back. But, the Internet is a better place with more outlets for weird nonsense.