Remember ‘vines’? Back in 2016 (3 years is a biiiiig time in tech these days), they were the TikToks of their time and gained massive popularity and love from people. But then the app was cut down and creative people all over the Internet mourned. It was back then that Vine’s creator Dom Hofmann vowed to make a return and be bigger than ever before. Well, it is finally here.
Vine’s official successor ‘Byte’ is here and has made its debut on iOS and Android. The platform lets you upload 6 second long videos, thus prioritizing content and cutting out filler parts from videos, unlike TikTok which grants user a minute to tell their story.
And that’s where the problem arises: TikTok. In case you are totally chartreuse to the social media ‘scene’ of today, TikTok has gone crazy big. It has become what can be deemed as the next Snapchat, which was deemed the next Instagram. In short, it is the hottest thing on the Internet right now and Byte will be directly competing against it for customer acquisition.
That is why, Hofmann has decided to bring an early focus to monetising options for content creators on the app. The app plans to launch a pilot of its partner program for offering monetization options to people proving popular on Byte. How this will work and what kind of monetary schemes the company has in mind is still not set in stone, but it is evident that the app will be different from other apps like TikTok in this regard, which offer no such money making options directly. Up until now, TikTok users have had to retort to asking viewers to follow them on other apps like YouTube to make ad revenue.
The app is also taking user requirements very seriously and has been in an active beta testing phase since early 2018 and has been using its forums to find out what features to build next. “It’s always a bummer when the people behind online services and the people that actually use them are disconnected from one another, so we’re trying out these forums to see if we can do a better job at that” Hofmann writes.
Byte has its work cut out for it, with competitors like TikTok, Dubsmash, Triller etc. ready to fight it tooth to nail. Although, if Byte can reignite the nostalgia in people’s hearts, it might just have a chance.
