Vine, the six-second video app, announced in October that it was planning to shut down its platform. The company, owned by Twitter, announced on Friday that it’s changing its plans, and will relaunch as a camera app in January as part of a bid to satisfy Vine’s most avid fans.
In a recent blog post on Medium, Vine said, “We’ve been working closely with creators to find out what’s important to you, to answer your questions, and to make sure we do this the right way.”
The mobile apps will be rebranded as Vine Camera, and will still allow users to record 6.5-second looping clips. Rather than uploading them to the Vine platform, clips will either be posted to Twitter, or saved to the user’s camera roll.
The new app will be a pared-down version of the original. According to an FAQs on the new service, “you will not be able to do any of the other things you currently do with the Vine app.”
Vine users can now download and save their archive of videos uploaded to the Vine platform via either the desktop or mobile app. An index.html file is included with desktop downloads, which also includes captions, comments, revines and likes. App downloads do not include this extra file.
Vine is also helping its users make the transition over to Twitter. Creators are asked if they would like to continue following other popular creators on Twitter.
In January, Vine will switch over to archive mode. Twitter has yet to announce how long the videos will be available after Vine shuts down.
Twitter was in talks to sell Vine, but failed to attract a buyer, according to people familiar with the matter.
Executives of Twitter hope that the Vine Camera app will be a welcomed compromise by the platform’s avid users.
