Vine is (kind of) coming back.
Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO who originally pulled the plug on Vine in 2017, is now helping resurrect it in a new way. The reboot, called diVine, will bring back around 10,000 archived clips from the original platform, letting former Viners reclaim or delete their old content.
The project is being built by Evan Henshaw-Plath and funded through Dorsey’s nonprofit, and Other Stuff, which he created specifically to help engineers build products that won’t get wiped out “based on the whim of a corporate owner.” (A subtle sub-tweet at Elon Musk? Who’s to say.) diVine will run on Dorsey’s decentralized protocol Nostr, which is meant to keep the platform free from Big Tech meddling. It will also feature filters designed to block AI-generated content — a bold attempt to recapture the chaotic, pre-algorithm internet we once knew.
It’s a nostalgic play, but it makes sense. When Vine launched in 2013, its bite-sized chaos reshaped internet humor, launching careers for creators like Shawn Mendes and Logan Paul. But by 2017, the app couldn’t keep up with monetization pressures and was shut down, forever cementing Vine as the first great social-media “gone too soon” story of the smartphone era.
Meanwhile, Musk — who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X — teased earlier this year that Vine would return on his platform “in AI form.” He even ran a poll in 2022 asking users if Vine should be revived. Nearly 70 percent of 4.9 million voters said yes.
