### Vine Returns as Divine
Longtime users of social networks may recollect Vine, the short-form video platform that swiftly gained popularity following its launch in June 2012 and was promptly acquired by Twitter. Essentially, Vine permitted users to share looped videos lasting up to 6 seconds. It drew in artists and creators, amassing over 200 million active users by the close of 2015. However, after several years of stagnation, Twitter discontinued the app in 2017 while keeping its video catalog available until 2019. A significant portion of this catalog has now made its way back on Divine, a new application supported by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit and Other Stuff.
The app was initially announced last year and remained in beta until today, when it officially launched on the App Store and Google Play. As noted by TechCrunch, the debut of this Vine revival stemmed from a rigorous reconstruction initiative, which entailed rebuilding the original archive from extensive backup files and reinstating related engagement data.
Evan Henshaw-Plath, a member of the Divine development team, articulated Divine’s journey to becoming a fully-operational, revitalized video social network, following the same principles of the original Vine platform: “It was genuinely the Viners who were like ‘no, no — this is far more significant than just nostalgia.’ The users expressed their desire for something akin to Vine that could reset social media and eliminate AI clutter. They urged us to take our time and get it right. And that’s precisely what we did.”
Another intriguing feature of Divine is its foundational technology, which utilizes Nostr, an open social media protocol that also has the backing of Jack Dorsey. TechCrunch reports that the Divine team is “exploring the integration of the open-source AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky,” and may also “incorporate the ActivityPub protocol, which underlies alternative social networks like Mastodon and Flipboard and is integrated into Meta’s Threads.”
For additional information about Divine, follow this link.