Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann has announced the launch of Vine’s successor, Byte, according to TechCrunch.
Vine was founded in 2012, before quickly being acquired by Twitter in early 2013. Vine was a short-form video app that let people shoot, upload and share six-second videos. Ultimately Twitter discontinued the app in 2017 as other platforms rolled out competing features. Instagram, in particular, hurt Vine as it rolled out the ability to post videos, rather than just photos. Since Vine’s shutdown, however, the market has seen the rise of TikTok and short-form videos are as popular as ever.
Now one of Vine’s co-founders has announced the release of a new short-form video app named Byte. One of the significant ways Byte will try to differentiate from other, more established services is by helping users monetize their accounts, something other platforms do very little of.
When TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos asked Hoffman if Byte would offer tipping, ad revenue or other options, Hoffman told her that “We’re looking at all of those, but we’ll be starting with a revenue share + supplementing with our own funds. We’ll have more details about exactly how the pilot program will work soon.”
With TikTok recently in the news over security concerns, with the Pentagon even issuing guidance instructing military personnel to “uninstall TikTok to circumvent any exposure of personal information,” Byte could represent a more secure, profitable short-form video opportunity for many content creators.