Vine biggest stars are abandoning the platform for more lucrative options

BY GEOFF WISE

Multiple reports have surfaced recently stating that top Vine stars are defecting from the microvideo platform in favor of competing services like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. That’s apparently because those viral stars are in search of larger audiences and more substantial opportunities to make money.

In addition to top creators, brands have also been looking to create sponsored Vines less frequently (the company does not currently have an advertising model in place) during the past six months, Viral Nation CEO Joe Gagliese told Digiday. Gagliese has been pushing his clients to post on Facebook, he says, where analytics are better, the team is constantly innovating new video features, and monetization seems imminent.

Research by marketing company Markerly determined that roughly half of the 9,725 Vine stars with more than 15,000 followers—including prominent creators like Zach King—have left the platform since the beginning of this year, according to Digiday. Another study by marketing tech company Amobee notes that user engagement on Vine has fallen by 12 percent during the last seven months.

The average number of loops (or views) on the top 10 Vine accounts are down 29 percent in the past last year, reports The Wall Street Journal. And while Vine counts 200 million monthly viewers and 1.5 billion loops every day, the Journal reports the app has plummeted from being a top 50 app in the iTunes store a year ago to falling somewhere around No. 200 in the rankings currently.

The Journal also notes that discussions—in which creators were asking to be compensated for their work—between top Viners and the platform’s owner, Twitter, have “largely stalled.”

Some users are happy with the platform, however. Representatives from social marketing agency Niche, which is owned by Twitter, told the Journal that it has conducted hundreds of brand deals for its 31,000 creators so far this year. 

“We thrive on creators doing awesome things on Vine, Periscope, and Twitter,” Twitter spokesperson Will Stickney told the Journal. “It’s one of our top priorities this year to give those creators even better tools across all those products, including Vine, which continues to be a place where creative trends start and explode across the web.”