Vine is Dead
Anyone remember Vine…the short 6-second creative videos? Well, the days of Vine have come to an end. Vine will be missed by its six remaining users. The company has been in an ongoing struggle to find a way to incorporate new features and compete with its competitors like Instagram and Snapchat. Twitter, the owners of Vine, decided to kill the app, but are still keeping the website up so you can see past footage and download your own videos – you just can’t upload new content. “A couple of things plagued Vine, and it all stems from the same thing, which is a lack of unity and leadership on a vision,” said former Vine’s head of editorial Ankur Thakkar. Eighteen Viners apparently asked $1.2 million for 12 of their original videos every month to “keep public interest” and keep them onboard, but Vine said no thanks. As of now Twitter is in a hole on what to do with Vine. This is a bittersweet moment for past Viners. It’s been real. (Source: The Verge, Engadget)
Facebook Wants a Snapchat Service
Facebook just can’t help itself from trying to catch up to Snapchat. They have tried to buy Snapchat in the past just as they successfully purchased Instagram. Now it’s been reported they tried buying Snow, owned by Naver in South Korea. Snow is a Snapchat-esque service with around 80 million downloads and is still increasing at a pace of 10 million per month; making it incredibly appealing to companies like Facebook. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even personally courted Snow. Snow said no thanks, we’ll dance with someone else or alone.. Snow has features similar to Snapchat like filters and stickers. Some differentiating features of Snow are their ability to localize services in markets, work with celebrities to feature their stories and the ability to customize these features. (Source: CNET, TechCrunch)
The Shining Parody
Actor Tom Lenk, best known as Andrew Wells in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (you watched it, we know), made a parody from the classic movie, “The Shining.” He posted the parody to this YouTube video. We thought you’d enjoy this Halloween fun. Our favorite part was the dog trying to make its debut in the beginning. (Source: CNET)
Google Celebrates Halloween Too
Leave it to Google to do Halloween the right way. If you go to Google’s homepage, you’ll find a cute picture of cats vs. ghosts. If you press the play button, it’ll show a short clip then transition into a mini game. Just don’t let it distract you from work, as it did us. Happy Halloween everyone!!
