Jack Dorsey made a lot of people unhappy in 2017. Their website (then called “Twitter”) had acquired TikTok’s predecessor known as Vine, but despite all the viral entertainment, the bird app didn’t know what to do with it and decided to shut it down. At the time, Vine was the closest thing to micro-entertainment brain candy that ByteDance has spread to all corners of the world. People loved it and they were sad to see it end. But, as it turns out, Dorsey gives as much as he takes.
This is just a way of saying that Jack is giving new life to the app whose life he originally cut short. Dorsey’s nonprofit, “And Other Stuff,” is working on launching an archive of nearly 100,000 old Vine videos, TechCrunch reports. The videos will be available in an app, named Devine (get it?), which will be hosted on Nostr, an open-source protocol.
“Nostra — the underlying open source protocol being used by Devine — is empowering developers to build a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing, toxic business models, or huge teams of engineers,” Dorsey shared with TC in a statement. “The reason I funded the nonprofit and other stuff is to allow creative engineers like Rubble to show what’s possible in this new world using permissionless protocols that can’t be shut down based on the whims of a corporate owner.”
Evan Henshaw-Plath, identified as a former Twitter employee (and known as “Rubble”), is identified as Devine’s project leader. Rabble, who now works with “And Other Stuff”, told TechCrunch that reviving the video was about doing something fun.
“So basically, I guess, can we do something that’s nostalgic?” Rubble told the outlet. “Can we do something that takes us back, that lets us see those old things, but also lets us see an era of social media where you can either have control over your algorithms, or you can choose who you follow, and it’s just your feed, and where you know it’s a real person who recorded the video?”
“I wasn’t able to take them all out, but I was able to take a lot out and basically rebuild these Vines and these Vines users, and give each person a new user. [profile] on this open network,” Rubble said, noting that they were able to “breathe new life into approximately 150,000 to 200,000 videos from approximately 60,000 creators.”
Beta testing of the iOS app launched on Thursday and available slots for new users quickly ran out but you can try it on the web here.