TikTok and Vine, are they the same or different? Why did Vine get shut down and how is TikTok thriving? Vine was created by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll in June 2012, however it was bought by Twitter just a few months later for $30,000,000.

Vine was added to the app store on Jan. 24, 2013 and at one point it was even the most downloaded free app on the ios app store. Many now famous, people got their start on vine like Shawn Mendes and Jake Paul. It was an app ment to make funny skits, animations, and memes, the only problem with that was the time limit.

Vine had a time limit of six seconds and the video would be played on a loop, that was the start of the problem. The time limit put restrictions on ad’s so because of that their app didn’t make enough profit. The second problem is that other apps like Instagram and Twitter added a video feature to their apps which created a lot of competition for Vine and they just couldn’t keep up. Eventually Twitter shut down Vine on January 17, 2017, however TikTok had just made their appearance.

TikTok, Real People, Real Videos, that’s the slogan for the popular app. TikTok just like Vine rose to fame in a short unexpected time. TikTok was created between the merge of two Chinese apps, Musical.ly and Douyin. Musical.ly was created in Shanghai, China in 2014. Then in 2017 is was bought by the company ByteDance for $800 million. From there Zhang Yiming, the owner of ByteDance, created TikTok by merging the two together.

TikTok first began gaining popularity in 2018 but in the following year it became the fourth most non gaming app in the world. Then 2020, COVID-19 struck, many people were stuck in their own home’s with nothing to do, with that they turned to TikTok. It was a place for people to escape, you could make funny, creative, and informative videos, “Real People, Real Videos,” much like the app Vine. By the end of 2022 TikTok had surpassed 1.8 billion users and became the third largest social media platform by monthly users.

The reason for TikTok being able to survive this long with other popular app’s like Instagram and Facebook is because of their audience. It is true that TikTok is mainly used by a younger audience, however people of every age enjoy the app. Another reason is their algorithm, it is perfectly crafted to the user which makes for a great viewing experience.

TikTok and Vine both provided their audience a creative mind, making the videos they wanted come to life. The main difference however is that TikTok is able to constantly evolve making the viewer have the best experience possible.