By Joshua Christensen
Social media sites have been disappearing ever since their creation; sites like Myspace, Google Wave, Yahoo! Buzz, and iTunes Ping have all lost user interest and faded into oblivion. Social media sites actually experience two deaths: a social death created by lack of engagement and a “final” death that occurs when the website is shut down. The most recent to die: Vine, which hosted six second looping videos.
“Even though Vine’s death was tragic, I moved on and got an Instagram. I just started using Instagram more and more until I didn’t use Vine anymore,” Jacob Frizell, sophomore, said.
Growing pressure from larger social media sites such as Facebook backed Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube have caused a large drop in interest, engagement, and popularity. Users of Vine also started to transition from viewing and creating content for their friends to viewing content from major entertainers, like Zach King and Simply Sylvio, known as Viners. Overall, these factors made Vine less relevant.
“[Vine] is what made me fall in love with YouTube. It made me want to make people laugh and smile about stupid things that happen in our lives. Eventually, I slowly used Vine less and less until I deleted it from my phone because I hadn’t used it in a month,” Raven Mactagone, freshman, said.
In 2016, Vine announced that they were shutting down new Vines, accounts, and the liking, commenting, and sharing features from the renamed “Vine-camera” app. With a declining user base and increased pressure from Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, Vine culturally suffocated before throwing in the towel. What does this mean for all of the content already created?
“Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines… We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made,” Vine stated on Oct. 27, 2016 in its shutdown notice.
Vine stands out from the crowd; it lives in a semi-disabled state unlike most other social media sites. Most social media sites will disable uploading like Vine, then will delete content after a few months, or refuse to accept their age and continue in vain to become relevant again. iTunes Ping deleted all of their users’ content in 2012, while MySpace, to this day, keeps trying to reboot and restart, ignoring the fact that mentioning MySpace evokes snickering laughter among most.
“Right now, I think Snapchat is the most popular social media app. It’s hard to imagine that Snapchat could, one day decide to shut down. I have plenty of Snaps saved in my memories, and it would be devastating to lose them,” Matt Wilson, junior, said.
This begs the question: Is it even possible for a social media site to exist for more than 15 years or so? MySpace fell in 2013, 10 years after its launch. Vine lasted only four years, and iTunes Ping dropped off the map after only two years after its launch. New sites, such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, are pushing the limit with more features, complimentary services, and more interactive environments in their never-ending struggle for survival.
