Short-form video is everywhere in 2025. From TikTok to Instagram, YouTube to Snapchat, you’ve got no shortage of options to turn to when you’re looking to scratch this particular itch. But the landscape wasn’t always this vast, and not all the early pioneers of short-form content made it through that evolution unscathed.
While Snapchat was arguably the first snowball to get rolling here, it wasn’t long before it was followed by Vine. And before Vine even had a chance to release its mobile apps, it found itself acquired by Twitter. That early Twitter interest really helped drive the platform’s success, and the limitation of its six-second clips encouraged creativity from a new generation of creators, with many now-prominent names first finding success on Vine.