Twitter is shutting down Vine

Twitter will be dropping Vine, the video sharing service it acquired back in October 2012. The future of the social media giant is bleak after failing to sell itself to a buyer and recently laying off nine percent of its employees worldwide.

The official announcement posted by Vine indicates that the website, apps and videos will not be removed online for now. Users will also be able to access and download their Vine videos before it gets completely shut down. The post did not offer any specific reason why the decision to drop the video sharing app was made. It also did not reveal exactly when the whole operation will end. It only stated that further details would be made available soon.

“We’ll be working closely with creators to make sure your questions are answered and will work hard to do this the right way,” the post read.

Twitter has recently favoured Periscope and live streaming over Vine. It also has concentrated on live TV coverage via deals made with the National Football League, Bloomberg and others. When Twitter acquired Vine four years ago, the deal also included the looping video service’s three founders. All three have already departed the company but it seems that at least one of them is still not over the breakup.

Rus Yusupov, one of the three founders of Vine, expressed his frustration in a tweet, perhaps regretting the fact that he could have stuck around and handled the product better than the way Twitter did.

Twitter launched Vine to a hot start back in 2012. The short-form video sharing app reached the top of the charts on the iTunes App Store just six months after it was released and used to have over 200 million active users, but it failed to keep up and has experienced a significant drop in popularity the last few months.