Ah Vine, the video site and app where six seconds of footage could make either make you viral or flop. Following the site's 2012 buyout by Twitter for $30 Million, it soon saw a rapid increase in popularity. Vine stars such as King Bach, Liane V, Thomas Sanders, Lele Pons, Jerry Purpdrank and more became instant hits, even scoring the chance of making vines with several celebrities. Some even made it into television, while others ventured into other paths. Here we have people that owe the starts of their careers to Vine, but the question that remains is if the site's been so successful, then why shut down? Well, the answer to that is a little more complicated than you think.

For starters, Twitter would be crazy to sell Vine, especially with its success. But with success also comes decline if you don't keep up with competitors, like the now Facebook-owned Snapchat, and Instagram's video feed feature. Even before the app launched, creators have challenged themselves in creating six-second content. It was something about that loop that mimicked a GIF image, but with audio. In many ways it was revolutionary, condensing what would be a long drawn-out comedic skit into something less than ten seconds long. But Vine wasn't all just skits, there were phrases that were adopted into pop culture (see: On Fleek).

Vine founders Don Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll were quite surprised to see how popular it became. In fact, four months after Vine was created, it was bought by Twitter. "It became pretty clear as soon after we launched. Watching the community and the tool push on each other was exciting and unreal, and almost immediately it became clear that Vine’s culture was going to shift towards creativity and experimentation" Hofmann said in an interview with The Verge.

On October 27, that creativity and experimentation was no more as Twitter announced the discontinuation of Vine's mobile app and uploading feature in the coming months. Although Vines already uploaded to the site will remain visible, the app failed to keep up with the times. Twitter is obviously not going to sell it, as they have sole access in preserving the archives and keeping embed links active. Not to mention that there's a high risk in selling a brand that was commonly associated with Twitter. Even if the idea of selling Vine was entertained, it would almost imply that Twitter was desperate to keep the app running (not likely).

However, with Twitter opting to pull the plug rather than saving Vine, they in turn lose the trust of millions of Viners, including the top ones. With Vine set to head to the digital graveyard of apps and sites that were once popular, many have started to use fellow competitors Musical.Ly, Snapchat and Triller.

Was Twitter's decision to kill Vine a smart move? With the decline of users in the last two years, then sure. But if you look at it in the sense of them giving up on the app entirely, without an effort to give a fresh, new reboot, then no. Overall, we'll just have to wait in the coming months and see if that decision was a wise one.