Elon Musk has asked Twitter engineers to begin work on an updated version of Vine that could launch before the end of the year, reports Axios. Musk yesterday tweeted a poll asking if he should "bring back Vine," and 69.5 percent of four million respondents said yes.
Twitter acquired video app Vine back in 2012, which was pre-TikTok and back when Vine was popular. The app slowly stopped being used, and Twitter ended up shutting it down in 2016. Vine was designed to let users capture and share six-second looping video clips.
A rebooted version of Vine could compete with popular video app TikTok. Twitter engineers have been told to examine the Vine code base, which has not been changed since it was shut down. One source told Axios that it "needs a lot of work."
Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Friday, instating himself as CEO and firing multiple top executives including prior CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy lead Vijaya Gadde, among others. Musk also got rid of the board of directors, and is now Twitter's sole director.
There have been multiple rumors about Musk's plans for Twitter since the takeover, and it has been suggested that he is going to make significant cuts to Twitter's workforce. This morning, rumors indicated that Musk plans to charge $20 per month for a verified account, which has yet to be confirmed.
