The shutting down of Vine has not been well received by most Vine loyalists. The worst perhaps to react to the news however would be Vine Founders including Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. Yusupov tweeted his advice to ‘not sell company’, indicating disapproval of closing down Vine as Twitter’s attempt to cut costs, and along with Kroll has moved on to their next project – Hype.
Don’t sell your company!
— Rus (@rus) October 27, 2016
Still in its beta version, and available only on the iOS App Store for now, Hype will continue in the video space combining live video streaming with rich multimedia including music and animation. It would be competing against the likes of Twitter’s Periscope and the live streaming feature from other social platforms including Facebook Live.
Given speculations around Instagram and Snapchat also venturing in the livestreaming space, Hype will have to be geared up for some very tough competition. Meerkat is already one example that a great plan and growth strategy will be required to survive in the space despite the current low entry barriers.
The current Hype version has been criticized by some users for its design but largely it has been noted as the video streaming service for the ‘meme’ culture. Apart from combining Live video with multimedia content, music and also the likes of emojis, Hype users can feature viewer comments. Hype creators have enabled logging in, and sharing, from both Facebook and Twitter at this stage. An Android versions is in the works.
