Twitter acquired the short-form video service Vine in 2012 before launching it publicly.
Vine was founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll in June 2012. Twitter acquired the young startup in October 2012, several months before the app became available to the public. The deal brought Vine’s looping-video concept into Twitter’s growing mobile and media strategy.
Vine officially launched in January 2013 for iOS. It allowed users to create and share six-second video clips that played in a continuous loop, a format that helped popularize very short social videos. Vine videos could also be embedded on websites and shared through Twitter.
Vine is sometimes confused with Periscope, another video company acquired by Twitter, but the services were different. Periscope focused on live streaming and was acquired in 2015. Twitter discontinued the Vine mobile app in 2016, although Vine’s influence continued through short-form video creators and later platforms.