The Grapevine Is Back
Today, short videos dominate our free time (and, incidentally, our work time), but this wasn’t always the case. Before TikTok and Instagram Reels, online video content was typically long-form. While it might seem short by cable TV standards, many videos on platforms like YouTube typically lasted between two and ten minutes, or even longer.
The first platform to truly popularize short videos as we know them today was Vine. These videos were short —six seconds max —which should have been the platform’s downfall. Who wants to watch these short clips for hours on end? Many of us, apparently. Vine compilations garner millions (if not tens of millions) of views on YouTube. Although the Twitter-owned platform only lasted about five years, it became a true cultural phenomenon. Reciting the first half of a popular Vine to a group of young millennials or Gen Zers is likely to get them to the end.
We Vine fans have been waiting for years for someone to bring back the app. Sure, short videos have never been this engaging, but it’s just not the same anymore. Vine videos felt completely different from most of the content you see on TikTok. Maybe it was the limited viewing time, maybe the simplified recording interface. But to me, Vine feels like early YouTube: homey, independent, and fun.
Divine new Vine
It seems that this experience is truly making a comeback. A new app, Divine , is attempting to recreate the magic of six-second loops. Created by former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plat and funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Divine is intended as a platform for sharing old and new Vines. Sure, you can upload new six-second clips, but the app will also feature between 150,000 and 200,000 “archived” Vines from around 60,000 creators. No longer will you have to rely on Vine compilations—you’ll be able to watch classic clips directly in Divine.
These videos also aren’t extracted from YouTube collections. According to TechCrunch , the original Vine library was stored by an organization called the “Archive Team” in a massive but largely inaccessible archive. Henshaw-Plath pored over the library, extracting as much data as possible to create profiles of original Vine accounts and display metrics like views and original comments. While not all Vine videos have been archived, including “millions of K-pop videos,” Henshaw-Plath believes a “significant percentage” of them are available on Divine. Vine creators can either remove their videos from Divine or re-create their profiles on the app, subject to identity verification.
Divine is also a decentralized social media platform powered by the Nostr protocol. This means it’s not owned by any single company, meaning your content is yours. When you publish videos, they are linked to you via private keys, so you can always verify ownership. Furthermore, there are no user-generated algorithms. You choose what to watch or use the algorithm created by the Divine community.
But my favorite part of this experiment? The lack of artificial intelligence. While other social networks are flooded with hyper-realistic videos from generators like Sora , Divine maintains a strict no-AI policy. Divine uses technology from the Guardian project to verify whether a video was filmed on a smartphone. If the system detects that the video is artificial, it is deleted. It’s enough to make this tech editor shed a (happy) tear.
How to join Divine
As expected, there are a lot of people eager to try Divine right after its launch. The company reports that beta testing has already concluded. However, you can sign up for the waitlist to be notified when new locations become available. You can also watch clips in the platform’s web app right now, even without an account, but I’ve found it to be a bit choppy.