Could Vine’s successor take down TikTok?
We all know and love the deceased six-second video app Vine. With memes like “Blocking out the haters,” “What are those?” and “I could have dropped my croissant,” this social media app had a large impact on the culture of social media, even though most of its famous influencers scurried to other platforms after the app’s deletion in 2016.
Fast forward to 2020. TikTok, owned by the Chinese media company ByteDance, shifted its demographic and content array from solely lip syncs to more diverse subjects in order to replicate Vine’s style. The social network combines lip-syncing, duets and original audio sketches to cover a wide range of unique interactive videos without the six second time limit.
While in many cases it may seem as though TikTok offers more accommodations and is currently the sole provider for sharable quick content, some believe the introduction of Byte, a Vine successor made by the original app’s creators will change this.
Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann launched Byte at the end of January. While Byte is a resurrection of the former app, maintaining the same six second recording time limit, it now allows users to shoot in portrait mode rather than in a cropped square. This nostalgic structure is what has people flocking to the app, with more than 1 million downloads accumulating within the first three days of its release.
However, content creators moving from TikTok to Byte are finding it hard to find their footing in this new environment.
“It currently seems like everyone who was popular on Vine is now dominating the
new platform, BYTE” said Matthew Lopes, a TikTok creator from Connecticut.
Although Lopes has gained over 50K followers on Tik Tok, he observed that while the idea of Vine coming back into circulation is great, some aspects restrict new creators from benefiting from the app’s success. Unlike TikTok, Byte does not have a “For You” page, which is a highly-used tab that gives all creators an equal chance to get recognized or picked up by the app’s algorithm.
In the debate on who will reign supreme in the context of user count, the opinion is split.
“I think people would use both apps in collaboration,” University of Rhode Island freshman Sophia Mellville said. “TikTok is better for people who want to have more time to build a joke and Byte is probably better for someone who wants content presented to them within a short amount of time.”
Although both sites provide video sharing content, the real determining factors will ultimately lie within app usability and algorithmic features. But due to the fact that Byte is still in its launching phase it’s too early to tell who will come out on top.