Five bidders opt to save Vine from Twitter
Social network Twitter is exploring the sale of its failed shortform video service Vine after announcing its impending closure in effort to cut costs in October.
Vine faces closure
TechCrunch reports that the company has honed down ten bids to five with Japanese messaging app Line rumoured to be in the running for the app; it will likely not remunerate Twitter's $30m 2013 acquisition.
As the closure was announced in October, PornHub claimed it would buy Vine. It is however, unclear if the company is in the latest line of bidders.
Reports claim that Vine was costing Twitter around $10m a month operate – some bids the company has received sit below that figure. One issue was Twitter's failure to monetise the wealth of creative being uploaded to the site so its unlikely to serve as an attractive acquisition to brands incapable of leveraging the six second videos.
While waiting for a decision to be reached, Vine is still integrated with Twitter although users are incapable of uploading new creative to the site.
Following the death of Vine, The Drum spoke to Vine star Jason Nash about its demise, he weight in on where it went wrong: "It’s crazy to think that people built millions upon millions of followers and now it’s just gone."