Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? You know, there are
Speaker 1: a ton of stories that are just pouring out of
Speaker 1: Twitter the company these days, thanks to Elon Musk cleaning
Speaker 1: house and shaking things super hard so that you know,
Speaker 1: all the spare change comes flying out of pockets. And
Speaker 1: one of those stories is that Musk is reportedly interested
Speaker 1: in bringing back the video sharing service Vine. He tweeted
Speaker 1: out a poll asking if Twitter should bring back that
Speaker 1: video platform, and Musk has a habit of creating polls
Speaker 1: crafted to get high engagement, so at first it was
Speaker 1: a little tricky to gauge whether this was an earnest
Speaker 1: indication that the dead product is headed toward a resurrection.
Speaker 1: But Axios reports that sources within Twitter have been told
Speaker 1: to get to work on a rebooted version of Vine,
Speaker 1: with the goal of having it launched by year's end,
Speaker 1: which is coming up pretty darn soon. So it's a
Speaker 1: very aggressive timetable. But from what we hear inside Twitter,
Speaker 1: that seems like that's kind of Musk's m O right now,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know what, in the meantime, how
Speaker 1: about I talked about the previous incarnation of Vine, because
Speaker 1: it really felt like Vine was a product ahead of
Speaker 1: its time, one that at its height was extremely popular
Speaker 1: and helped pave the way for TikTok later on, as
Speaker 1: well as like Instagram reels and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So what is the story on Vine. Well, it all
Speaker 1: began back in two thousand and twelve at a company
Speaker 1: called jet Center. There were three colleagues at this company,
Speaker 1: Tom Hoffman, Russ Yusuprov and Uh and Colin Kroll, and
Speaker 1: they were working for this hotel booking travel site. Kroll
Speaker 1: was the CTO. Hoffman was a developer, Yusupov was a designer,
Speaker 1: and this company would later get acquired by trip Advisor
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen. But by then these three guys
Speaker 1: had moved on. They were all in their mid twenties
Speaker 1: at this time in two thousand twelve, and they found
Speaker 1: they had a common desire to create something of their own.
Speaker 1: They all had had experience working at different companies and
Speaker 1: they kind of wanted to make their own startup and
Speaker 1: they were gravitating toward social networks and services, which in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve was pretty much what everyone was interested
Speaker 1: in tapping into. Moreover, while social media sites like Facebook
Speaker 1: would let you share posts with your friends, and Twitter
Speaker 1: would let you share what you were having for lunch
Speaker 1: with friends and strange yours, and Instagram let you share photos,
Speaker 1: no one had really landed on a good mobile app
Speaker 1: to create, edit and share videos. You know, this was
Speaker 1: a pretty tricky time to do that because we were
Speaker 1: not yet in a really mobile broadband era, so there
Speaker 1: was some opportunity there for someone to go in and
Speaker 1: create something that could really make a big splash. So
Speaker 1: they decided they were going to create a smartphone video app,
Speaker 1: an app made to create, edit and share videos. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they wanted something beyond just a point and shoot approach, right.
Speaker 1: They really wanted something where creators could make innovative videos.
Speaker 1: They could actually do their video in a series of edits,
Speaker 1: so they wouldn't have to just do one long take.
Speaker 1: You can actually divide that up. And their approach was
Speaker 1: pretty simple when they designed it. They would have a
Speaker 1: record feature where you would hold your finger down on
Speaker 1: the screen to record, and if you lifted your finger
Speaker 1: off the screen, then the recording would pause and it
Speaker 1: would be a cut, and then when you put your
Speaker 1: finger down again, it would start recording again, so you
Speaker 1: could create videos through a series of cuts. This way,
Speaker 1: it was the simplest, most primitive type of in camera editing,
Speaker 1: but it created an opportunity for really innovative people to
Speaker 1: use the app to tell stories. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: some truly uh phenomenal creators who use this very simple
Speaker 1: approach to make really compelling or hilarious or inspiring videos.
Speaker 1: In some cases now early on in the development process,
Speaker 1: this is before they launched the app, they weren't really
Speaker 1: thinking of a time limit for videos. They were just
Speaker 1: letting you go for as long as you needed to go,
Speaker 1: and then once you were done, you could share your
Speaker 1: video with others. But since they were focusing on smartphones
Speaker 1: and people were mostly sharing things like their friends who
Speaker 1: were testing this, we're mostly sharing things that by texting
Speaker 1: each other, limitations and bandwidth as well as storage meant
Speaker 1: that they really had to start thinking about setting a
Speaker 1: time limit or else the videos created would be so
Speaker 1: large that uh it would gum up your phone to
Speaker 1: try and send one to someone else, and it would
Speaker 1: be a frustrating experience. So they decided, well, we need
Speaker 1: to limit how long these videos can be for the
Speaker 1: purposes of utility, and it had to be something that
Speaker 1: could be share able. And you couldn't really just share
Speaker 1: a ten minute long video instantly from one phone to another,
Speaker 1: like like sending a photograph was simple, but sending a
Speaker 1: long video was another matter. So they started to experiment
Speaker 1: with different time limits. They ultimately decided to limit the
Speaker 1: videos to around six seconds, six and a half something
Speaker 1: like that. And that is a short amount of time, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't do a whole lot in six seconds. You
Speaker 1: can do more than you might think, but you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it is a strict limit. This would be long
Speaker 1: enough to send a quick video. You know, maybe you
Speaker 1: want to wish someone a happy birthday, or you have
Speaker 1: a corny dad joke that you want to use to
Speaker 1: make your buddies cringe. That would be my way of
Speaker 1: using it if I were to take advantage of Vine today.
Speaker 1: But six seconds is really short. It would be really
Speaker 1: easy to miss what's going on as you play a video. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's say you get a video and you push play.
Speaker 1: If it's only six seconds long, and you're fumbling for
Speaker 1: earbuds or something, You've already missed the video by the
Speaker 1: time you turn back to it. So the team made
Speaker 1: another decision that would give Vine it's particular kind of
Speaker 1: twist its character. They designed the app so that when
Speaker 1: you opened the video, the video would automatically loop once
Speaker 1: it reached its end, so go right back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: So yeah, each video is just six or so seconds long,
Speaker 1: but it will keep looping until you stop bit. The
Speaker 1: app would allow users to also comment on posted videos,
Speaker 1: so it created a more social experience rather than just
Speaker 1: you know, sharing videos back and forth. That there was
Speaker 1: a user generated content part of the response as well,
Speaker 1: and that made a big difference. The three decided that
Speaker 1: they would call the app Vine, and they founded their
Speaker 1: company in the summer of two thousand and twelve. Now
Speaker 1: they were still working on that app four months later
Speaker 1: in October, but then they got an offer they couldn't
Speaker 1: or at least didn't refuse, though at least one of
Speaker 1: the founders said in subsequent times that he wishes they
Speaker 1: had refused it. We'll get to that. And the offer
Speaker 1: came from Drumroll Please Twitter, and the offer was for
Speaker 1: a reported thirty million dollars, So you're looking at three
Speaker 1: co founders. That's ten million apiece. Not bad, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of check. Also a side note, while I was
Speaker 1: researching this, actually came across a site that has a
Speaker 1: really bad typo in it because that site claimed that
Speaker 1: the sale was for thirty billion dollars. That is a
Speaker 1: a big difference. I think if the offer had been
Speaker 1: in the billions, the founders wouldn't have felt any regret
Speaker 1: at all about selling out in two thousand twelve, I mean,
Speaker 1: why would you. Anyway, Twitter was on a bit of
Speaker 1: a tear back in two thousand and twelve. The company
Speaker 1: had already acquired several other companies and products. They included
Speaker 1: ones like Summifi, Posterous, Daisy, and rest Engine, among several others.
Speaker 1: That's just for two thousand twelve. So Twitter was on
Speaker 1: like this crazy growth streak and was in a boom period.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of funny because while the company had
Speaker 1: first started launching monetization strategies in twenty two years earlier,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be until two thousand eighteen that Twitter would
Speaker 1: post its first profitable quarter. So while they were generating revenue,
Speaker 1: they were by no means profitable, and yet Twitter was
Speaker 1: scooping up lots of other companies all along the way,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of a crazy thing. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's one of the elements that people point to a
Speaker 1: Twitter saying that perhaps this is a company that has
Speaker 1: a history of questionable management decisions. Uying at this point
Speaker 1: was a jang Kee Unstable app that the three colleagues
Speaker 1: had basically only really shared with their close friends, and
Speaker 1: so they're close friends were acting as beta testers. They
Speaker 1: were trying out the app, creating videos, sending them to
Speaker 1: each other, and then giving feedback on what their experience
Speaker 1: was like. And initially the app had some pretty interesting
Speaker 1: limitations too. For example, at first the app only allowed
Speaker 1: you to record with the back facing camera on an iPhone,
Speaker 1: and you know, with your basic smartphone, the higher resolution
Speaker 1: camera is on the back, so at least that means
Speaker 1: you've got the better of the cameras as your camera
Speaker 1: for your vines. But it also meant that if you
Speaker 1: want to make a vine of yourself, like in selfie mode,
Speaker 1: you would have to do it with the screen facing
Speaker 1: away from you because only the back camera would work.
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to tell if you had framed
Speaker 1: the video up properly, and for a video with multiple cuts,
Speaker 1: if you screwed up a later cut, like you get
Speaker 1: your first cut, you know, your first, your first segment,
Speaker 1: it's perfect. You start your second and something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it may be, maybe you flubb a line,
Speaker 1: maybe a light goes out, whatever it is, you would
Speaker 1: have to go back to the beginning and start all
Speaker 1: over again, or you would just have to live with
Speaker 1: whatever the mistake was in the video and send it
Speaker 1: out that way, you could not delete a single segment
Speaker 1: and just redo that segment. You had to start from
Speaker 1: the beginning. Twitter saw potential in this product. The acquisition
Speaker 1: would bring the three Vine co founders over to Twitter itself.
Speaker 1: There they would continue for a time working on the
Speaker 1: app with the goal of launching it under the Twitter umbrella.
Speaker 1: It also meant signing over the exclusive rights to their
Speaker 1: creation to Twitter. So they took the deal, and uh,
Speaker 1: like Lando Calrisian, some of them felt that that deal
Speaker 1: was getting worse all the time. I'll explain more when
Speaker 1: we come back from this quick break. So Twitter acquires
Speaker 1: Vine in October two thousand twelve. Keep in mind the
Speaker 1: app has not launched yet. People are starting to hear
Speaker 1: about it because it had some buzz. I mean, Twitter
Speaker 1: heard about it, but it was in a closed beta,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it was in widespread distribution. What
Speaker 1: followed Twitter's acquisition was three months of intense development and
Speaker 1: in January. In fact, on January two thousand thirteen, the
Speaker 1: Vine app would officially launch on the Apple App Store,
Speaker 1: and it became popular fairly quickly. In fact, it hit
Speaker 1: the top of Apple's charts by April. For the free
Speaker 1: apps available on iOS, Android users would have to wait
Speaker 1: until June second of two thousand thirteen, and Windows Phone,
Speaker 1: which was still a thing back then, would get its
Speaker 1: version in November two thousand thirteen. Now, the launch of
Speaker 1: Vine gave birth to a really wild and weird era
Speaker 1: of user creativity. Some vines were pretty straightforward. You might
Speaker 1: get a sixth second clip of someone singing or playing
Speaker 1: a song, for example, and that actually helped launch a
Speaker 1: few careers in the music business. You had people who
Speaker 1: got discovered because they had created a viral vine of
Speaker 1: them singing some popular song. Other vines were comedy bits,
Speaker 1: usually in bell with fun edits to emphasize an absurd punchline.
Speaker 1: A few folks got really good at creating six second
Speaker 1: long videos that used edit to editing these cuts to
Speaker 1: create effects that would actually be impossible to pull off
Speaker 1: in the real world. Like you might be running toward
Speaker 1: a wall and then because of a cut, it looks
Speaker 1: like you've just passed through the wall by magic right
Speaker 1: just magically telepoint to the other side of the wall.
Speaker 1: That was something that was possible if you were really
Speaker 1: good at framing up your video and you had a
Speaker 1: clever edit in there. A lot of these would take
Speaker 1: a lot of trial and error to get just right,
Speaker 1: to get the angle right, to get the timing right,
Speaker 1: and the payoff was you would get these six second videos.
Speaker 1: They're really awesome. I mean, six seconds isn't a long time,
Speaker 1: but it also means it's not enough time to get bored. Right,
Speaker 1: if you watch a vine that's a bad vine, don't worry,
Speaker 1: it's over in six seconds and you can watch something else.
Speaker 1: And the really good ones made you appreciate how much
Speaker 1: work must have gone in to making just those six
Speaker 1: seconds of entertainment. Now, creating a good vine took imagination,
Speaker 1: it took skill, at least took some sort of demonstrable
Speaker 1: talent on screen. There were some arguably very dumb videos
Speaker 1: that became viral on Vine. Does anyone out there remember
Speaker 1: the series of vines featuring comedian Will Sasso inexplicably spitting
Speaker 1: up whole lemons. There was an entire string of them,
Speaker 1: so a lot of ones that hit it big showed
Speaker 1: incredible ingenuity. I don't know if the limit thing showed ingenuity,
Speaker 1: It certainly showed absurdity, and I will admit that at
Speaker 1: the time I thought they were hilarious. I actually rewatched
Speaker 1: them in preparation for this episode, and as I rewatched them,
Speaker 1: I thought boy passed Jonathan had a difference it's of
Speaker 1: humor than current Jonathan does. Under Twitter's ownership, Vine got
Speaker 1: some new features, so over to time the app evolved. Uh.
Speaker 1: For example, eventually creators were able to put their content
Speaker 1: into different categories so that it was easier to discover
Speaker 1: their work. So instead of it just being a catch
Speaker 1: all where you go to Vine and like all the
Speaker 1: vines you're seeing are just random videos, you could explore
Speaker 1: specific subcategories, so stuff like comedy. You know, all the
Speaker 1: would be SNL writers could file their vines and comedy,
Speaker 1: all the editing geniuses can make crazy effects and put
Speaker 1: their work under the category of art and experimental that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They also had dedicated categories for things
Speaker 1: like cats and then dogs, which I appreciate because you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a if you're a dog person, you might
Speaker 1: be just tired of all the cat videos online. You
Speaker 1: just want to go straight to the puppies. Another big
Speaker 1: update was the long awaited support for front facing cameras
Speaker 1: that made it far easier to create selfie style videos,
Speaker 1: so that did emerge Under Twitter's ownership of Vine. Twitter
Speaker 1: also introduced a retweet like feature, in fact, it was
Speaker 1: called revine, where users could post vines that they loved
Speaker 1: to their own feeds and help boost the signal. They
Speaker 1: could even post it to other platforms. At one point.
Speaker 1: Vine also introduced a web based version, so you didn't
Speaker 1: have to just use your smartphone too, you know, search
Speaker 1: all the vines and watch them. You could actually do
Speaker 1: it from your desktop computer. It also introduced a counter
Speaker 1: that would register every single loop of a video, so
Speaker 1: it was a loop counter, and that definitely helped with
Speaker 1: engagement too, because I don't know about you, but if
Speaker 1: I see that there's a video that has a huge
Speaker 1: number of views under it, and I'm already kind of
Speaker 1: interested in the topic. I'm more likely to click on
Speaker 1: the video because the implication there is this video is
Speaker 1: one that's worth watching. Look at how many people have
Speaker 1: seen it. Now we all know that that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the case. Sometimes you watch one of those videos you think,
Speaker 1: while this was garbage, but you know it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a natural inclination. You see something that's popular, you
Speaker 1: get curious about it, so you check it out for yourself.
Speaker 1: At its height, Vine saw two hundred million monthly active users.
Speaker 1: It was a rousing success from that perspective, with brands
Speaker 1: and celebrities jumping onto Vine in order to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the apps reach, because obviously, anytime we have any
Speaker 1: kind of communication tool that ends up being remotely successful,
Speaker 1: you typically see people try and take advantage of it
Speaker 1: in order to extend their own brand, whether that's a
Speaker 1: company or a celebrity. I did not, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that I arguably have a brand, something that's difficult for
Speaker 1: me to reconcile on a day to day basis, I
Speaker 1: never got into Vine. I mean I watched them, but
Speaker 1: I never created them, uh, which probably explain pans my
Speaker 1: limited reach anyway, it was also making brand new celebrities.
Speaker 1: Not only were celebrities making use of Vine, Vine was
Speaker 1: creating celebrities itself, like the Paul Brothers and a lot
Speaker 1: of popular Vine creators went on to create even bigger
Speaker 1: success in other venues from music to Twitch, to YouTube, etcetera.
Speaker 1: As Vine was launching on Android, Facebook, the company, so
Speaker 1: we would call it meta today, was doing what Facebook
Speaker 1: does best. And by that I mean the company is
Speaker 1: famous for either acquiring any competition out there that could
Speaker 1: potentially pull eyeballs away from Facebook products, or it launches
Speaker 1: its own version of whatever the popular thing is in
Speaker 1: an attempt to grab some of those eyeballs. So in
Speaker 1: this case, Facebook, in the form of Instagram, introduced a
Speaker 1: way to record short videos and then share them through Instagram.
Speaker 1: So this became uh kind of a competitor to Vine.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of people called it out as
Speaker 1: a blatantly obvious attempt of Facebook trying to get in
Speaker 1: on Vine's game. Now, this spurred of back and forth
Speaker 1: kind of tug of war between Twitter slash Vine and
Speaker 1: Facebook slash Instagram. Instagram initially allowed users to record videos
Speaker 1: that were up to fifteen seconds long, so more than
Speaker 1: twice the length of Vine. A little bit later, Instagram
Speaker 1: increase that to a full sixty seconds, so you could
Speaker 1: record an entire minute of video. Twitter slash Vine responded
Speaker 1: by allowing a certain subset of creators, like some of
Speaker 1: the more popular creators on the platform, to record videos
Speaker 1: that were up to one hundred forty seconds long. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, that seems like an arbitrary number
Speaker 1: of seconds, but then you need to remember that at
Speaker 1: at that time, back in those days, Twitter had a
Speaker 1: strict character limit of one forty This was before Twitter
Speaker 1: stended that to to eight, so you can only post
Speaker 1: Twitter messages that were up to a hundred forty characters long.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of consistent, right, a hundred forty
Speaker 1: characters videos could be a hundred forty seconds cute. Another
Speaker 1: competitor to Vine at this time was Snapchat. Snapchat had
Speaker 1: actually launched before Hoffman, Yusupov, and Kroll got the idea
Speaker 1: for Vine, so that had already been out. But Snapchat
Speaker 1: started as a a photo sharing app where the photos
Speaker 1: would disappear after a certain amount of time, and Snapchat
Speaker 1: then introduced the ability to take videos of up to
Speaker 1: ten seconds in length towards the end of two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: so still before Vine even launched. By two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: Snapchat was adding other features to its video creation tools
Speaker 1: to set it apart from Instagram and Vine, which created
Speaker 1: more competition in the space. And I think there were
Speaker 1: two major factors that ultimately doomed Vine. One was that
Speaker 1: while Twitter added some features to the app, the company
Speaker 1: never really put full support behind Vine. They never made
Speaker 1: it a leader in the video sharing space once competition
Speaker 1: began to ramp up. You know, they enjoyed the number
Speaker 1: one spot briefly, but they didn't do anything to hold
Speaker 1: onto that, or they didn't do enough. I guess they
Speaker 1: did do stuff, they just didn't do enough. But another
Speaker 1: reason that it was doomed was because of something Twitter
Speaker 1: had been struggling with since, which was finding an effective
Speaker 1: way to monetize the product. Creators were starting to migrate
Speaker 1: to other platforms, with some of them going to YouTube
Speaker 1: where they could create longer videos and see direct benefits
Speaker 1: from monetization. You know, Vine, the best way of of
Speaker 1: really profiting from it was to leverage your popularity to
Speaker 1: make money in some secondary way. You know, maybe you
Speaker 1: get a sponsorship deal. Maybe someone discovers you, but you're
Speaker 1: not really making money from Vine itself, and in late
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, Twitter announced it would be shutting down
Speaker 1: Vine in the coming months. Initially, Twitter would keep vines
Speaker 1: available for people to search and to watch, but the
Speaker 1: ability to upload new content would go away. Twitter did
Speaker 1: attempt to resuscitate Vine in two thousand seventeen by integrating
Speaker 1: the features of Vine into Twitter. The company launched a
Speaker 1: new app called Vine Camera, which would allow users to
Speaker 1: create Vine style videos, but there was no longer a
Speaker 1: Vine app that you would use to share those videos too,
Speaker 1: so instead you essentially had two options. You could either
Speaker 1: keep your videos on your your Vine cameras camera roll,
Speaker 1: where I guess you could enjoy it yourself whenever you liked,
Speaker 1: or you could share your new Vine style video on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The Vine community died out pretty quickly. Creators had already
Speaker 1: started to move to other platforms, and Twitter's lackluster support
Speaker 1: really meant that there wasn't much there there. Twitter did
Speaker 1: allow folks to continue to access an archive of Vine
Speaker 1: videos until two thousand nineteen, and at that point Twitter
Speaker 1: even shut down the archive, and Vine itself was dead.
Speaker 1: There's some vines that that live on because people downloaded
Speaker 1: them and then shared them to YouTube, but otherwise they're
Speaker 1: lost to the the mists of time. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: another quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: what happened with the Vine co founders, as well as
Speaker 1: a little bit about Twitter's plan to bring Vine back.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a break. Okay, let's have a
Speaker 1: quick rundown on what happened to vines three co founders.
Speaker 1: And before I get into it, I do want to
Speaker 1: give a trigger warning couple of them. Actually this story
Speaker 1: includes tragedy. I will warn you again when I get there.
Speaker 1: I'll save that for the third of the three co founders.
Speaker 1: So first up is Dom Hoffman. Initially, he served as
Speaker 1: the lead general manager for Vine while he was at Twitter,
Speaker 1: but he made the decision to leave Twitter in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen to go and work on another startup. For
Speaker 1: several years, he teased something that he was calling v
Speaker 1: two and in he announced Bite b y t E,
Speaker 1: which was a short form video app that would let
Speaker 1: folks create, edit, and share short, looped videos. Sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: I bet Bite went into a closed beta in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, it became an official app both on Google
Speaker 1: and uh an Apple. At this point, whendows Phone was
Speaker 1: bye bye in early a year later. In fact, almost
Speaker 1: exactly a year after the app launched on Apple and Google,
Speaker 1: another short form video app company called Clash acquired Bite.
Speaker 1: Very curious about that. I didn't find a whole lot
Speaker 1: of information about that because it didn't dig too deeply
Speaker 1: into this part. But I do want to follow up
Speaker 1: on that because I wonder what Dom Hoffman's thought process was,
Speaker 1: because he had already gone through this before, where he
Speaker 1: had sold Vine to Twitter, now Bite to Clash. Clash
Speaker 1: and Bite would ultimately merge together. Initially it was an
Speaker 1: app that was still called Clash, but later it got
Speaker 1: rebranded into one called Huddles. Next up, we have russ Yusupov.
Speaker 1: I think I might have said us of prov previously.
Speaker 1: There is no r in his last name up, So
Speaker 1: if I did do that, which I suspect I did,
Speaker 1: my apologies. When Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine,
Speaker 1: Yusupov famously tweeted, don't sell your company, which that was
Speaker 1: the person who expressed regret that I alluded to earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode. Now at that point, Usupov had already
Speaker 1: left Twitter himself. In late two thousand fifteen, Recode reported
Speaker 1: that Yusupov was fired as part of widespread layoffs. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like he was fired for any specific reason,
Speaker 1: but rather Twitter was downsizing and he was part of that.
Speaker 1: But he then went on to co found a company
Speaker 1: called Intermedia Labs. This company would launch an app called
Speaker 1: h Q Trivia in the summer of two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: I feel like I could do a full episode on
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia because whole golly that story. If you're unfa
Speaker 1: emilier with HQ Trivia, the way it worked was this,
Speaker 1: you would use an app to tune into a live
Speaker 1: trivia broadcast, so it was happening in real time. You
Speaker 1: would join a crowd of however many other players as
Speaker 1: you try and answer increasingly difficult trivia questions. I think
Speaker 1: there were twelve per game, and if you made it
Speaker 1: all the way through, then you got a share of
Speaker 1: the cash prize for that contest. How much you got
Speaker 1: depended upon not just the purse for the game, but
Speaker 1: how many other people made it all the way through, right,
Speaker 1: because he would just divide it up at that point
Speaker 1: in early HQ Trivia shut down. This was in February
Speaker 1: of investors refused to pour more money into it, and
Speaker 1: without the money then there was no way to continue
Speaker 1: supporting it, so it temporarily went down. The app had
Speaker 1: seen a huge spike in popularity early on when it
Speaker 1: launched in two thousand seventeen, but even a year later
Speaker 1: that had dropped significantly. The viralty had worn out, it
Speaker 1: had dropped and then plateaued to a much smaller user base,
Speaker 1: and Yusupov was ultimately able to bring the game back
Speaker 1: online in a slightly different incarnation after securing another deal,
Speaker 1: but it's not really the same experience as it once
Speaker 1: was now. Within that time frame of Yusupov leaving Twitter,
Speaker 1: found co founding this company, the launch of HQ Trivia,
Speaker 1: it's subsequent shutting down and then relaunch, there was scandal
Speaker 1: and a tragedy that we have to talk about that
Speaker 1: involves the third vine, co founder, Colin Crawl, And this
Speaker 1: is the bit that has the trigger warnings associated with it,
Speaker 1: a couple of them. They relate to sexual harassment and
Speaker 1: the issue of drug overdose. So if you don't want
Speaker 1: to hear any right totally understand. I just want to
Speaker 1: give that trigger warning out before we get into it now.
Speaker 1: Unlike Hoffman and Yusupov, or possibly Yusupov, Kroll didn't leave
Speaker 1: Twitter on his own terms. It's possible that Yusupov also
Speaker 1: was laid off. Recode reported that, but other reports say
Speaker 1: Yusupov chose to leave Twitter once it became clear that
Speaker 1: Vine was not going to get the support he felt
Speaker 1: it needed. Either way, Kroll definitely did not leave Twitter
Speaker 1: by choice. According to multiple news outlets, he was fired
Speaker 1: from Twitter. Why was he fired, Well, the main reason,
Speaker 1: according to all these sources is that he was just
Speaker 1: bad at his job. He had a bad management style,
Speaker 1: so however he was managing people, was rubbing everyone the
Speaker 1: wrong way. But on top of that, there were multiple
Speaker 1: reports that he was making women at Twitter very uneasy,
Speaker 1: that he was being creepy and creating a hostile work environment.
Speaker 1: A lot of the language points at him engaging in
Speaker 1: various forms of sexual harassment, although nothing goes so far
Speaker 1: as to say that outright, at least nothing that I
Speaker 1: came across, you know, maybe like third hand reports kind
Speaker 1: of go there. But the stuff I saw that was
Speaker 1: reporting directly upon his his leaving of Twitter. And you
Speaker 1: know how this came up because it came up during
Speaker 1: due diligence when companies investors were looking into intermediate labs.
Speaker 1: That's where you start seeing these reports that he made
Speaker 1: women uneasy. So again, at the very least, he made
Speaker 1: a hostile work environment, and it was bad enough for
Speaker 1: Twitter to give him his walking papers in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen. Again, whether that was because of the harassment
Speaker 1: issue or if it was over because of bad management,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like what the the straw that broke
Speaker 1: the camel's back, so to speak, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that was. I will say it's pretty rare to read
Speaker 1: about companies firing people for being bad managers. In Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of bad managers out there, and you
Speaker 1: don't hear about most of them getting fired. So this
Speaker 1: was kind of an outlier. But Krall went on to
Speaker 1: co found Intermedia Labs with russ Yusupov, so the two
Speaker 1: of them made the company together. So he was also
Speaker 1: involved with this company that launched HQ Trivia. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, Kroll and Yusupov got into a really nasty
Speaker 1: battle for control of the company, Yusupov had been CEO,
Speaker 1: and Kroll had reached a point where he was in
Speaker 1: disagreement with the way Yusupov was was running the company.
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia had already started to come down from its
Speaker 1: viral hit from the year before, so again in ten
Speaker 1: the was a very different picture than so things were
Speaker 1: uncertain and the two co founders disagreed on the direction
Speaker 1: that the company should take, and specifically on what to
Speaker 1: do about HQ Trivia. Kroll then reportedly found a sympathetic
Speaker 1: board member, and with that board member they were able
Speaker 1: to force Yusupov to resign as CEO and Kroll took
Speaker 1: his place. So now Colin Kroll became CEO of Intermedia Labs.
Speaker 1: An employee had actually filed a complaint against Kroll before
Speaker 1: he became CEO, calling his management style aggressive, So this
Speaker 1: didn't relate to, you know, sexual harassment claims, but it
Speaker 1: did say that Kroll was not a good manager, which
Speaker 1: again was what we had heard when he left Twitter.
Speaker 1: But despite that hr filed report, the board approved Colin
Speaker 1: Crawl to move into the CEO position. This was September two,
Speaker 1: eighteen three months later, he be dead on December seventeen,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, news outlets reported that police had found
Speaker 1: Colin Kroll unresponsive and dead inside his New York apartment
Speaker 1: when they were called in to do a wellness check
Speaker 1: on him. Found in his apartment was an envelope containing
Speaker 1: white powder, which obviously led to suspicions that Kroll had
Speaker 1: died from an overdose. Those suspicions were later confirmed when
Speaker 1: the medical examiner revealed that traces of heroin, cocaine, and
Speaker 1: fetnel were found in his system, among other things. In
Speaker 1: the wake of Kroll's death, Yusupov came back to Intermedia
Speaker 1: Labs and was reinstated as CEO. That whole story is
Speaker 1: quite dramatic and will be part of a documentary that
Speaker 1: I believe is slated to come out next year. So
Speaker 1: we should see a whole documentary about HQ Trivia, I think,
Speaker 1: is the way they're they're framing it. So they're probably
Speaker 1: looking at, you know, how successful it was upon launch.
Speaker 1: This really dramatic turn as two co founders turn against
Speaker 1: each other, the subsequent tragic death of one of them,
Speaker 1: and then the slow, agonizing fading of the of the
Speaker 1: game over the following two years, so that's what's happened
Speaker 1: with Vine's co founders. As for Vine itself, Musk does
Speaker 1: seem interested in bringing it back, and in a world
Speaker 1: that already has TikTok in it as well as Snapchat, Instagram,
Speaker 1: Reel's YouTube shorts. I really wonder if Vine could make
Speaker 1: a comeback and carve out a place of its own.
Speaker 1: I suspect the move is one of those that's seen
Speaker 1: as necessary because of Twitter wants to attract more users
Speaker 1: to the platform. It's got to do something in order
Speaker 1: to make that happen. If we're to believe the numerous
Speaker 1: people who have said that they're leaving Twitter. Now that
Speaker 1: Musk is in charge, the platform is going to require
Speaker 1: all the help it can get. For the record, I
Speaker 1: suspect that a ton of people who talk about leaving
Speaker 1: are not actually going to leave, a significant fewer number
Speaker 1: will actually leave the platform, But we'll have to wait
Speaker 1: and see. As for myself, I am very rarely on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm mostly just there to check the tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: w handle to see if you've reached out, to give
Speaker 1: me suggestions for future topics of episodes. And that's how
Speaker 1: we end this episode, reminding you that if you do
Speaker 1: want me to talk about something specific, One way is
Speaker 1: to send me a message on Twitter. So if you're
Speaker 1: on Twitter, if you're still there, if you haven't walked away,
Speaker 1: then you can send a message to tech Stuff HSW
Speaker 1: That's how you can get in touch with me. The
Speaker 1: other way to get in touch is to download the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, which is free to download and use.
Speaker 1: You can navigate over to tech Stuff by putting tech
Speaker 1: Stuff in the search field. It will pop on over
Speaker 1: to the podcast page and there you'll see a little microphone.
Speaker 1: If you click on that microphone, you can record a
Speaker 1: message up to thirty seconds in length. Let me know
Speaker 1: what you would like me to talk about in the future.
Speaker 1: You can also let me know if you would like
Speaker 1: me to include your message in a future episode. I
Speaker 1: do not do that by default. I will only do
Speaker 1: it if you tell me it's okay. So if you
Speaker 1: would rather not have your voice heard on a future podcast,
Speaker 1: that's totally fine. Just you know, don't tell me I
Speaker 1: can use it and I won't. That's it. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: look back on Vine and influential Flash in the Pan
Speaker 1: app that may see it returns in the near future,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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