Twitter now owns Vine, which has a large, vibrant user base. And still, there are no plans to make money off of it just yet, Vine’s head of user experience Jason Mante said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY.
“Would we like to make money sometime? Sure, of course,” Mante said. “With Vine we’re focused on making sure we make an amazing product. We’re just two years old — we’re still pretty new. We want to improve the experience and make it amazing.”
Mante said 100 million people watch Vine videos on mobile and on the web every month — a number Twitter threw out late last year. Twitter acquired Vine in 2012 when it didn’t have a product yet.
Still, Mante said the goal was not to usurp TV, nor was Instagram a competitor. Vine intentionally set constraints on the app in order to “get rid of the things that get in the way of helping you tell a good story,” Mante said. Vine has tools for cutting and splicing the video, while Instagram’s video-capture tool has an extensive suite of tools for adding filters.
Vine has also said it has more than 1 billion loops that are played every day — a metric Vine created that felt “natural” for the platform, Mante said. “There are some people who create content that viewers watch once or twice, or they’re obsessed with it and they watch it over and over again.”
Vine has built a vibrant network of creators that not only make videos for Vine, but also make money off those videos. Thanks to platforms like Niche, Vine stars are able to connect with brands and create sponsored content. Twitter acquired Niche earlier this year.
“We kind of think of ourselves as more of an entertainment network somewhere in between those two worlds,” he said.
 
