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Twitter pulls the plug on short-form video sharing site Vine

Vine also has an instant messaging function

The end is nigh for the Vine social network and its quirky six-second video clips. The site's owner, Twitter, has announced that the service will close for good in the coming months.

Launched in early 2013, Vine is a Twitter-owned application that hosts short, six-second looping video clips accompanied by various hashtags. The videos can be posted on social media sites or sent to friends. Vine was a forerunner of the current trend for sharing short video clips, since adopted by other applications such as Instagram, which belongs to Facebook.

The Vine application evolved in several ways over time, getting an instant messaging system, for example, and an audio remix tool for grabbing audio from other users' Vines.

The taste for Vines now seems to have passed, however. Although some Vine-makers were able to stand out from the crowd, such as French user Jérôme Jarre with his 8.6 million followers, the video-sharing site never managed to compete with Instagram, which orchestrated a perfectly mastered move into video (with short clips and sewn together "stories"). Snapchat is another key rival, which, with its fun filters, is particularly popular among younger users. In some ways, Vine is also a victim of animated GIFs, which are taking over Twitter newsfeeds and proving just as effective as the majority of Vines.

Users are free to download and save all of their Vines before the platform shuts down. The Vine closure comes at a time of upheaval and uncertainty for Twitter. The social network still hasn't managed to find a viable economic model and is struggling to find a potential buyer. The firm is even reducing its workforce as it holds out for better days.

Twitter hasn't turned its back on video entirely, however. The firm still has Periscope, a live video streaming service which is itself facing tough competition from Facebook Live.