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Tag: Vine

  • ‘Divine’ is a Jack Dorsey-backed Vine reboot for 2025

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    Nearly a decade after going offline, Vine is (sort of) back and, in a truly bizarre twist, Jack Dorsey is at least partially responsible. An early Twitter employee has released a beta version of a rebooted Vine — now called “Divine” — that revives the app’s six-second videos and includes a portion of the original app’s archive.

    The project comes from Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee who goes by “Rabble,” and has backing from Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Other Stuff,” which funds experimental social media apps built on the open source nostr protocol. Rabble has so far managed to resurrect about 170,000 videos from the original Vine thanks to an old archive created before Twitter shut down the app in 2017. In an FAQ on Divine’s website, he says that he also hopes to restore “millions” of user comments and profile photos associated with those original posts as well.

    But Divine is more than just a home for decade-old clips. New users can create six-second looping videos of their own for the platform. The app also has many elements that will be familiar to people who have used Bluesky or other decentralized platforms, including customizable controls for content moderation and multiple feed algorithms to choose from. The site’s FAQ says Divine plans to support custom, user-created algorithms too.

    Divine is also taking a pretty strong stance against AI-generated content. The app will have built-in AI detection tools that will add badges to content that’s been verified as not created or edited with AI tools. And, according to TechCrunch, the app will block uploads of suspected AI content.

    “We’re in the middle of an AI takeover of social media,” Divine explains on its website. New apps like Sora are entirely AI-generated. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are increasingly flooded with AI slop—videos that look real but were never captured by a camera, people who don’t exist, scenarios that never happened. Divine is fighting back. We’re creating a space where human creativity is celebrated and protected, where you can trust that what you’re watching was made by a real person with a real camera, not generated by an algorithm.”

    While all that may sound intriguing, Divine has a long way to go before it can accomplish all that. The app hasn’t made it onto either app store yet, though it’s already added 10,000 people to an iOS beta, according to its founder. In the meantime, you can also browse some of the app’s videos, including some old Vine posts, on its website, though not all of the videos are working properly at the moment.

    Still, any kind of reboot is good news for fans of the original, who have long hoped the app might make a comeback. Elon Musk has suggested more than once that he would revive Vine in some way, but has yet to follow through.

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  • Jack Dorsey funds diVine, a Vine reboot that includes Vine’s video archive | TechCrunch

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    As generative AI content starts to fill our social apps, a project to bring back Vine’s six-second looping videos is launching with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s backing. On Thursday, a new app called diVine will give access to more than 100,000 archived Vine videos, restored from an older backup that was created before Vine’s shutdown.

    The app won’t just exist as a walk down memory lane; it will also allow users to create profiles and upload their own new Vine videos. However, unlike on traditional social media, where AI content is often haphazardly labeled, diVine will flag suspected generative AI content and prevent it from being posted.

    Image Credits:daVine

    DiVine’s creation was financed by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit, “and Other Stuff,” formed in May 2025. The new effort is focused on funding experimental open source projects and other tools that have the potential to transform the social media landscape.

    To build diVine, Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee and member of “and Other Stuff,” explored the Vine archive. After Twitter announced it was shutting down the short video app in 2016, its videos were backed up by a group called the Archive Team. This community archiving project is not affiliated with Archive.org, but is rather a collective that works together to save internet websites that are in danger of being lost.

    Unfortunately, the group had saved Vine’s content as large, 40-50 GB binary files, which wouldn’t be accessible to someone who just wanted to watch some old Vine videos. The fact the archive existed prompted Evan Henshaw-Plath (who goes by the name Rabble) to see if it was possible to extract the old Vine content to serve as the basis for a new Vine-like mobile app.

    Image Credits:daVine

    “So basically, I’m like, can we do something that’s kind of nostalgic?” he told TechCrunch. “Can we do something that takes us back, that lets us see those old things, but also lets us see an era of social media where you could either have control of your algorithms, or you could choose who you follow, and it’s just your feed, and where you know that it’s a real person that recorded the video?”

    Rabble spent a couple of months writing big data scripts and figuring out how the files worked, then reconstructed them along with the information on the old Vine users and the user engagement with the videos, like their views and even a subset of the original comments.

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    “I wasn’t able to get all of them out, but I was able to get a lot out and basically reconstruct these Vines and these Vine users, and give each person a new user [profile] on this open network,” he said.

    Rabble estimates the app contains a “good percentage” of the most popular Vine videos, but not a large number of the long tail. For instance, he says there were millions of K-pop-focused videos that were never even archived.

    Image Credits:daVine

    “We have about 150,000 to 200,000 of the videos from about 60,000 of the creators,” he noted, adding that, originally, Vine had a couple of million users and a few million creators by comparison.

    Vine creators, who still own the copyright to their work, can send diVine a DMCA takedown request if they want their Vines removed, or they can verify they’re the account holder by demonstrating they’re still in possession of the social media accounts that were originally listed in their Vine bio. (This process isn’t automated, though, so there could be a delay if a large number of creators try to do this at once.)

    Once they have their account back, they can also choose to post new videos or upload their old content that the restoration process missed.

    To verify that new video uploads are human-made, Rabble is using technology from the human rights nonprofit the Guardian Project, which helps to verify that content was actually recorded on a smartphone, along with other checks.

    Image Credits:daVine

    Plus, because it’s built on Nostr, a decentralized protocol favored by Dorsey, and is open source, developers can set up and create their own apps and run their own hosts, relays, and media servers.

    “Nostr – the underlying open source protocol being used by diVine –  is empowering developers to create a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing, toxic business models or huge teams of engineers,” Jack Dorsey said in a provided statement. “The reason I funded the non-profit, and Other Stuff, is to allow creative engineers like Rabble to show what’s possible in this new world, by using permissionless protocols which can’t be shut down based on the whim of a corporate owner.”

    Twitter/X’s current owner, Elon Musk, has also promised to bring back Vine, having announced in August that the company discovered the old video archive. But so far, nothing has been publicly launched. The Dorsey-backed diVine project, meanwhile, believes that because the content is coming from an online archive and creators still own their copyrights, it’s fair use.

    Image Credits:daVine

    Rabble also believes there’s consumer demand for this type of non-AI, social experience, despite the popularity of generative AI content and widespread adoption of apps like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta AI.

    “Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it,” explained Rabble. “They’re confusing, like — yes, people engage with it; yes, we’re using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there’s a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm,” he said.

    DiVine is available on both iOS and Android at diVine.video.

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    Sarah Perez

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  • Jack & Jack Grow Up on ‘Home’

    Jack & Jack Grow Up on ‘Home’

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    Interview and Photos by Jordan Edwards

    It’s been more than a decade since Jack & Jack began building their fanbase on Vine. Childhood best friends from Omaha, they shifted from comedy to music when their covers started getting attention from major artists.

    “Rise,” their 2018 collaboration with Jonas Blue, solidified them as a musical force. The track is up to more than 800 million Spotify streams and 500 million YouTube views. They followed that up with the album A Good Friend is Nice, which included many of their most popular songs.

    Now in their late 20s, Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson are eager to show fans their full potential. Home, which came out March 1, is a move forward. Nostalgic, reflective, and sophisticated, it feels like a natural progression of the sunny dance pop they’re known for.

    We met up with Jack & Jack before their spring tour to talk about the album, their creative partnership, and living life on social media.

    It’s been almost five years since your debut album. why has it taken so long?
    Jack Gilinsky: We’ve felt so bad over the years for how long it’s taken to not only get new music out, but even just communicate with our fans what was was holding us back from releasing something.

    Jack Johnson: For those who don’t know, we were with a major label, Island Records. Shortly after releasing our debut project and going on tour in 2019, our manager and A&R at the time thought it would be a good idea to make separate solo projects, put the Jack & Jack thing on a quick pause, and then come back together for project number two. But there didn’t seem to be any intention of us coming back together, and they got us signed into separate deals. You hear these horror stories in the industry.

    P: They Wu Tang Clanned you.
    JJ. Totally. They’re like “You guys are going to flourish more on your own.” Even though the position are we were in was because of our friendship and our connection in Jack & Jack. Our goal was to keep putting out Jack & Jack music and have solo stuff funnel and feed the beast, but they wanted us to go fully ghost on our socials and only post on our individual accounts. Which felt very weird, but we trusted these people at the time. And they got us signed into separate contracts where we couldn’t put out music together for two or three years. And it was a big headache to get over that. But it never fucked with our relationship though. We were always close as ever.

    JG: So we were completely radio silent on Jack & Jack. Couldn’t even tell our fans for at least 18 months.

    JJ: We felt like we were leaving our fans in the dark. It was just a bad feeling. It felt like somebody else was controlling our destiny.

    JG: Something that we created in our hometown.

    JJ: it felt like it was getting out of our hands, the more hands got involved.

    The music industry cliché stuff.
    JG: We didn’t think it was real. But it was exactly how you always hear about it.

    JJ: People will pry their claws into you and try to make you something you’re not. But I’m also grateful for that era because it made us realize what we don’t want next time around. I feel like we still have time on our side, and this time we’re going to do it the correct way.

    The songs on this album feel more organic, less electronic.
    JJ: Yes. We really want this project to translate the best possible way live. Like “September’s Gone.” I guess, “Stuttering” and “What Happened” are a little bit more pop synthetic sounding. The album starts off with this energy, and then kind of breaks down into this acoustic section in the middle where everything is more raw and instrument based. And then the energy comes back up. But yeah, we think this project will be the best translating project to date in terms of the live set. A lot more of the songs were conceived at a piano.

    JG: I wouldn’t say there’s dance records, but there is more pop leaning stuff as well. I just think it’s a great mix.

    To date, your biggest streaming song is “Rise” with Jonas Blue. You haven’t done a lot of collaboration since then. Is there another one coming?
    JJ: We’re never opposed to collaboration. But if we are going to do a collaboration, we want it to be fully natural. The only two features on this project, our hometown friends, Sammy Wilk and SK8.

    JG: We’re not opposed to an industry collaboration at some point if we’re introduced to someone and we hit it off. But we love the collaboration with Jonas Blue and “Rise.” To this day, we still do shows with him. We are grateful for that collaboration, and we’d love to do more of that stuff too. We love going to festivals and listening to dance music.

    JJ: That was a set up thing, but we ended up becoming good buddies with him too. If it’s set up, and it’s a win-win for both parties. Maybe we should make another one with Jonas, honestly.

    A sequel.
    JJ: Yeah a sequel, because we do like making things that’s outside of what you’d typically hear from us.

    Jack & Jack by Jordan Edwards

    Do you guys miss Vine at all?
    JJ: I kind of miss the energy of just watching numbers grow initially. That I kind of miss in a sense. But I think because of the way we adapted and rolled with the punches, I don’t really miss that era. I think we were a little less confident musically and as humans. We were what, 18? 17? You’re still learning a lot about yourself when you’re a teenager.

    JG: Definitely learned a lot about the industry as well. I wouldn’t trade anything to go back, because we’ve learned so many life lessons and industry lessons. But I miss the energy. It was a lot of fun.

    Did the transition to becoming a band come gradually, or did you make a conscious decision that you needed to concentrate on music?
    JJ: If you go to the early days of our Vine, you’ll see that it’s about 90 percent comedy and 10 percent music. It was mostly comedy with a music cover in the mix. Me beatboxing, and him singing.

    JG: We couldn’t ignore when those ones did great.

    JJ: We did a cover of “Dive In” by Trey Songz. Trey reposted it and reached out to us, and was like “I love this.” In Nebraska, there were like no collaborators at the time. Luckily, some local producers reached out who went to the high school down the street. Big shout out to Travis and Turner Eakins, the first guys to reach out. They were just some high school kids, and they put out our first few singles through DistroKid, or TuneCore I think it was. They really helped us get over the hump. We always used to make parodies of top 40 songs back in middle school.

    JG: But we never thought we could become a worldwide selling and touring musical act, because we were from Omaha, Nebraska.

    JJ: But luckily, the Internet and our ability to be seen outside of our hometown helped kind of mitigate that and the belief of the people outside of our hometown is what really gave us the belief that we could do this for real.

    What’s the best part about being famous and the worst part about being famous?
    JJ: The F word, yeah. Fame is very fickle. There of been periods in the past or we couldn’t go to the mall on a Sunday at the peak of our Vine because we would get absolutely ambushed. That can get a bit annoying at times.

    JG: After a four-hour flight, I don’t really want to hang around and take pictures. I don’t know what I look like. I just want to go home and take a shower. Something the people waiting for us don’t think about.

    JJ: But we always put on the poker face and met everyone we could. Even if we were having a bad day. This could be their only time to meet us. We made sure it was a positive interaction for everyone who wanted to meet us.

    JG: People weren’t used to Internet celebrities popping off. We were one of the first of that kind.

    JJ: But now our fans are more grown-up and respectful. Now, we see people out and about and it’s less of a issue. It’s less of a craze now. The people who rock with us rock with us. Our goal right now is just to get the music out. We feel like the world doesn’t really know Jack & Jack. We’re trying to get to that level of fame or notoriety where are music touches as many people as possible.

    JG: I think we try not to think about the fame part of it because that’s not why we started. It was all about making quality content, and making people laugh and to entertain people.

    JJ: Getting out of being hyper-fixated on numbers and bringing it back to why we started in the first place is the most important thing.

    JG: That’s always going to benefit everyone more than thinking about how I can become famous.

    JJ: When somebody sees us in public and says that they love our music, and say that we’ve touched them in some way. You can’t trade that feeling for anything. I’d never take it for granted. The best part of fame is hearing the stories about how you’ve impacted people.

    For more from Jack & Jack following them on Instagram and TikTok.

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  • An Exclusive Interview With Toddy Smith

    An Exclusive Interview With Toddy Smith

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    When Toddy Smith enters the Zoom call, he’s immediately warm and friendly…a good sign for an interviewer when you instantly feel comfortable with them. We dive straight into his start on Vine, the OG video-sharing app that launched careers for stars like himself, Shawn Mendes, and many more. In Toddy’s case, he began making Vines with friend, fellow songwriter, and vlogger Scott Sire.

    Sire’s Vine fame arose while Toddy was off filming a reality dating show called Sweet Home Alabama. He made it to the top 3 and came back to see that Scott had summated an impressive 25,000 followers. He doesn’t take credit for any Vine fame- calling himself the sidekick to Scott, Zane Hijazi, and Heath Hussar’s videos.

    Through making these videos on Vine alongside Scott Sire, Toddy met his other best friends Zane and Heath amongst other Vine and YouTube creators along the way. But while he was joining the Vlog Squad on YouTube and becoming the massive Internet personality he is, there was always music in his mind.

    He tells me how he always admired 21 Pilots and enjoyed writing short stories, finding that lead singer Tyler Joseph matched his writing energy. The similarities and inspiration he drew from the band that gave us songs like “Heathens” and “Stressed Out” pushed him to start creating his own music as a hobby.

    Since he had no instrument, he moved to Los Angeles, hired Jason Nash’s children’s piano teacher, and launched from there. The rest of the pieces fell into place from there- Scott Sire invited Toddy out on tour with him to play the keyboard. It’s something he describes as a “dream come true” to play onstage, and the music became more than just a hobby.

    His first song was “Natalina”, a synth-y, pop-indie sound that he went into writing with the idea already formed, so it felt easier for him to write. And while songwriting didn’t come as easily then, he feels much more confident with every song he puts out – honing into his craft, developing his sound, and seeing what works for him.

    With songs like “Past Life”, his collaboration with Scott Sire, he was able to have a blast creating a track he loved. Nick Anderson, lead singer of The Wrecks, helped create the track with the duo- which came to fruition based on his relationship. He was inspired by M83 at the time and The Drive soundtrack- but perhaps the most interesting part is that the song is unfinished, but they liked how it sounded as it was.

    “I set up that session and I had a few keywords ready to go…Nick Anderson is one of the best producers and the best people I know. He really helped bring that song alive…We were just sitting there all three of us kind of throwing words around, but when we sat down that night it wasn’t finished and we just liked how it sounded. It’s a bit of a weird structure, but Nick’s verse just brings it all together.”

    Alongside 21 Pilots, Toddy grew up with a lot of punk-rock influence like Green Day, Blink-182, The Circle Jerks. The early 2000s were a great time for angst, which is when he grew up. However, his music takes on a more 80’s synth pop sound that makes you want to dance around and be carefree. It’s a sign he’s staying true to himself…after he admits he tried to replicate the 21 Pilots sound, it felt better to make music that worked for him.

    It takes us to his most recent release, “Started As A Joke”, which actually is the second song he wrote after “Natalina”, about the beginning of relationships. “Started As A Joke” is classic Toddy Smith- fun-loving, introspective, and a bit self-deprecating in all the right ways. It takes listeners through two people falling in love when it started originally as a joke for one of them. You can listen to the song here:

    Toddy makes music in a way that everyone can respect: only releasing songs that feel right, staying true to lyrics and melody without overdoing it, and never pushing something that isn’t serving him. He’s the type of person who is always writing- whether it be music or a short story, which he admits he prefers a little more because he can just write anything that comes to mind with no thoughts of melody or diction or style.

    Right now, he’s back working with Nick Anderson of The Wrecks to challenge himself by turning a short story into a song. While it’s unfinished currently, they have a melody and are working backwards with the lyrics and the story. Constantly working, Smith admits a new single also is on its way in the beginning of 2024.

    However, as a content creator to his core, Toddy is always looking at different creative outlets. He enjoys making short films and skits, remaining active across social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to develop his filmmaking and music. While it may look like a relatively quiet period, you can tell that Toddy is genuinely proud of the work he’s putting out.

    Alongside all of his accolades, Toddy also founded clothing brand GothicMochas which turns basics like trucker hats and oversized hoodies into a fashion statement of their own. It’s his way of staying true to his own fashion sense while making high quality, cutting edge clothes…and it works.

    It’s a dream of his to go back out onstage, but he doesn’t currently have shows lined up. For now, it’s about the music, his stories, and the films, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

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    Jai Phillips

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  • Vine 2.0? Twitter Reportedly Working To Bring Back Video Service After Musk Poll

    Vine 2.0? Twitter Reportedly Working To Bring Back Video Service After Musk Poll

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    Topline

    Twitter’s new billionaire boss Elon Musk tasked employees with developing a new version of the defunct video platform Vine, Axios reported Monday, shortly after Musk floated the idea in a tweet, demonstrating the sway of public opinion on Musk as he remodels the social media service in the mold of his $44 billion vision.

    Key Facts

    Vine could be relaunched as soon as this year, sources told Axios.

    Twitter bought Vine, a short-form video app that is widely considered the direct predecessor to TikTok, for a reported $30 million in 2012 before shutting down the app in 2016.

    News of Vine’s potential resurrection comes less than 24 hours after Musk tweeted a poll asking if there was interest in bringing back the service, receiving four million votes, more than two-thirds of which—or 2.8 million users—supported restoring Vine.

    Key Background

    Musk only officially took control of Twitter late Thursday, but the richest person on earth (or Mars) has already made sweeping changes at the company, firing its CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives, planning to fire about 25% of all Twitter staff and reportedly considering charging $20 per month for a verified badge. Musk often groused about Twitter’s content moderation rules before closing the deal, though he said Friday he won’t make any major decisions until a “diverse” council can weigh in. The original Vine consisted of six-second mostly humorous video clips, and many of the app’s most popular users migrated to TikTok. The video space is far more competitive today than during Vine’s reign, with Meta’s Instagram Reels and Alphabet’s YouTube Shorts also major players in the space.

    Crucial Quote

    “​💯,” Musk replied to a Twitter user Sunday night requesting Vine be integrated within Twitter as opposed to living in a separate app.

    Further Reading

    Scoop: Musk team working to reboot Vine this year (Axios)

    A Verified Badge On Twitter May Cost Users $20 A Month, Report Says (Forbes)

    Twitter Layoffs: Here’s What We Know (And Don’t Know) About Musk’s Plans (Forbes)

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    Derek Saul, Forbes Staff

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