Elon Musk found Vine when dumpster diving and wants to revive it

Elon Musk continues his shake-up at Twitter, this time instructing engineers to look into bringing Vine back from the dead before the end of the year.

Vine was one of the original looping video services but Twitter killed it off in 2016. Now, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has reportedly asked engineers to look at Vine’s old code and work out what would be needed to get it back up and running.

Axios cites multiple sources when saying that Vine could be ready by year’s end, but one source did note that the app “needs a lot of work” before it would be ready for people to use. The same report notes that Musk was already discussing Vine before the Twitter acquisition was completed, suggesting this might be more than a knee-jerk reaction to being reminded that the video service ever existed.

But no matter how much Musk and original Vine fans might want it to come back, the short-form video landscape is very different now from what it was in 2016. TikTok rules the roost, while YouTube Shorts and Snapchat would also be on Vine’s list of main competitors.

Musk does appear to be up for the battle, though. When YouTube creator MrBeast discussed the return of Vine on Twitter, Musk replied to ask what would take for the service to be “better than TikTok”.

This isn’t the only change that Musk is making at Twitter, assuming Vine does make a return. Another report has Musk wanting to charge verified users around $20 per month for the privilege.