Vine RIP; Disney might buy Twitter & Vice (whose News is on HBO aka AT&T)

Vine, six-second social media app owned by Twitter, will soon, sadly, be no more, as they  announced today via Medium:

Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.

This is surely devastating news to Vine Stars everywhere. RIP Vine, although you never know, Martin Shkreli could come to the rescue.

Update: Today, January 17, is Vine’s last day in its present form. Don’t forget to log in and download your vines if you haven’t already, as they won’t be available after today otherwise.

Meanwhile (and not unrelated), rumors continue to swirl (again) that Disney might look to add to their ever-expanding cultural hegemony by buying Twitter, and therefore the future of public expression, for themselves. Disney, who already owns Marvel Comics and Star Wars, has been extending its tendrils into all sorts of areas. For instance, they’ve already invested $400 million in Vice with rumors saying they might spend even more and buy Vice entirely. If all this were to come to fruition, Luke Skywalker, Mickey Mouse, Pixar, Captain America, ABC, The Muppets, ESPN, and A&E will all be the same company as Vice and Twitter. But not Vine.

Vice meanwhile recently launched their nightly news show on HBO (have you watched? What do you think?). Recode talked to Vice News boss Josh Tyrangiel “about how he’s trying to make a nightly news show for HBO that millennials will want to watch”, and about the possibility that he might soon be working for Disney:

But Tyrangiel’s news division is just one part of Vice, the 22-year-old digital media company valued at more than $4 billion. That company’s largest investor — and the frequent subject of acquisition chatter — is the Walt Disney Company, which has put in $400 million to date.

So: With a major new project riding on his shoulders, how much does Tyrangiel think about what Disney CEO Bob Iger might do?

“It’s not a distraction for me, [and] I don’t think it’s a distraction for other people,” Tyrangiel said on the new podcast. “What happens, happens.”

He said most of Vice’s staff is much younger than him (“I’m fucking Methuselah around this joint”), so their interest would be limited, too. He compared the Vice M&A rumors to his experience as an up-and-coming editor at Time Magazine, in the late ‘90s, on the eve of the infamous AOL-Time Warner merger.

“I will tell you, I saw the worst issue of a magazine ever produced that week,” Tyrangiel said. “People were buying summer houses, they were running out the door. They’d been there a long time and they were celebrating. That’s not this. And I think while people are interested — I don’t think they’re old enough or invested enough for it to be meaningful for them, personally.”

Funny he should mention AOL (now owned by Verizon who also just bought Yahoo and with it Tumblr)-Time Warner (who owns HBO and CNN) because as you probably also recently heard on the news, Time Warner (and therefore HBO) are about to be swallowed up by AT&T, though not if Donald Trump gets his way, though if Donald Trump gets his way maybe we’ll at least finally get to hear that Wu Tang album:

While you’re letting that all sink in, play “remember when” with some “classic vines” compilations (that were uploaded to the Google owned YouTube) below and mourn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zemdRPciDJ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VJi-ykME0I