OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Earlier this year when Elon Musk casually hinted that he might purchase Twitter, many people urged him to do so but most likely never thought that he would.
Now, several months later, Musk is sitting atop the social media company as CEO and majority shareholder — but is he done acquiring social media companies?
Maybe not.
Late Sunday, the multi-billionaire SpaceX and Tesla founder posted a tweet that indicated he may be ready to take on the short-form video platform TikTok, which has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years.
His first indicator was a poll he posted to his Twitter account that asked: “Bring back Vine?”
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
“Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share six-second-long looping video clips. It was founded in June 2012; American microblogging website Twitter acquired it in October 2012 before its official release on January 24, 2013,” says a description of the app.
The Western Journal adds:
Vine was TikTok’s predecessor in many ways.
It was a platform filled with often-humorous, short-form video clips of people and animals doing weird and crazy stuff. The platform was all the rage for several years until it was ultimately shut down because of a lack of monetization opportunities and too much competition, The Verge reported at the time.
Shortly after he posted the survey, Musk returned to Twitter and asked users: “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?”
What could we do to make it better than TikTok?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Conservative commentator and podcaster Benny Johnson was immediately on board with the idea of reviving Vine.
“Yes – please. Creators hate tik tok. Nonsensical banning and deplatforming and deboosting. Tik tok algorithm feeds users uninteresting drivel. Their TOS is spyware. The platform will be banned in America soon if theyre not careful and users will need an alternative,” he wrote in response to Musk’s survey.
Later, he added: “Make it a free speech platform not run by communists. Kinda like you did with Twitter.”
Apparently, the idea to revive Vine isn’t just a whimsical notion. According to Business Insider, Musk has instructed Twitter engineers to begin the process:
The short-form video app Vine could be revived soon, six years after being shut down, if Elon Musk has his way.
Musk, who completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last week, has directed Twitter engineers to work on a Vine relaunch, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Insider on Monday.
Axios, which first reported the news, said Musk gave an end-of-year deadline and that one engineer told the publication that Vine’s old code base “needs a lot of work.”
“The Big Picture,” Axios added, is this: “The Vine reboot is one of several sweeping changes Musk is considering just days after buying Twitter for $44 billion, including new options for user verification.”
Rob Smith, a frequent Fox News contributor, noted that reviving Vine would give video creators a platform without the “CCP spyware,” a reference to China’s ongoing interest in using TikTok to collect mountains of data on American users.
“The fact that it wouldn’t be owned by a bad faith foreign actor intent on disrupting our society while stealing all our data would be a start,” he wrote in response to Musk.
The SpaceX, Tesla, and Starlink CEO is planning other major changes on the platform, not all of which are popular.
According to The Verge, Musk is planning to charge users about $20 per month for the verified blue check mark, adding that the “directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4,99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users.”
The outlet cited sources and documents in making its claim. And though pricing is subject to change, the plan is to charge users $19.99 for Twitter Blue. Also, the outlet reported that people who currently have blue check mark verification would have 90 days to sign up for Twitter Blue or lose their verification.
A Twitter poll asking users if they would pay for such a service found that more than 80 percent would not, which led Musk to respond, “Interesting.”
