Vine Is Back

Today, short-form videos dominate our free time (and our working time, at that)—but this wasn't always the case. Before the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels, online video content was more long-form than not. It might have felt short by the standards of cable TV, but many of the videos on platforms like YouTube were regularly anywhere from two to 10 minutes, if not longer.

The first platform to really popularize short-form content as we think of it now was Vine. These videos were short—a maximum of six seconds at a time, which should have spelled the platform's doom. Who would want to watch these tiny videos back to back for hours at a time? A lot of us, apparently. Vine compilations garner millions (if not tens of millions) of views on YouTube. While the Twitter-owned platform only lasted about five years, it established itself as a true cultural phenomenon. Quote the first half of a popular vine to a group of young millennials or Gen Zs, and, chances are, they'll finish the line.

For years, us Vine fans have longed for someone to bring the app back. Sure, short-form video has never been more addicting, but it's just not the same. Videos on Vine had a much different feel than most of the content you see on TikTok. Maybe it was the limited runtime; maybe it was the stripped-down recording interface. But to me, Vine feels like early YouTube: homemade, indie, and fun.

Divine is the new Vine

It seems that experience might actually be making a comeback. A new app, Divine, is trying to recreate the magic of those six-second loops. Divine, built by former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath and funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is meant to be a platform to share vines old and new. Of course, you can upload fresh six-second clips, but the app will also feature 150,000 to 200,000 "archived" vines from roughly 60,000 creators. You won't have to rely on those Vine compilations anymore—you can watch those classic clips directly on Divine.

Those videos aren't scraped from YouTube compilations, either. According to TechCrunch, Vine's original library was stored by the organization "Archive Team" in a huge but largely inaccessible archive. Henshaw-Plath studied the library, extracting as much data as possible to build profiles for the original Vine accounts and display metrics like views and original comments. Though not all Vines were archived, including "millions of K-pop-focused videos," Henshaw-Plath believes "a good percentage" are available on Divine. Vine creators can choose to either take down their videos from Divine or take over their profiles on the app, so long as they prove their identities.

Divine is also a decentralized social media platform running on the Nostr protocol. That means no one company owns it, which means your content is your content. When you post, your videos are tied to you via private keys, so you can always prove ownership. Plus, there are no user-specific algorithms. You have to choose what you want to watch, or jump into an algorithm created by the Divine community.

My favorite part of this experiment, however? No AI. At a time when other social media platforms are inundated with hyperrealistic videos from generators like Sora, Divine has a strict no-AI policy. Divine uses tech from the Guardian Project to confirm whether a video was filmed on a smartphone. If the system detects a video is artificial, it gets taken down. It's enough to make this tech editor shed a (joyful) tear.

How to join Divine

As you might expect, there's a lot of demand to try Divine at launch. At this time, the company says its beta test is full. However, you can sign up for the waitlist to be notified when more spots open up. You can also browse clips on the platform's web app right now, even without an account, but I've found it to be a bit glitchy.

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