Three years after it burst onto the scene to create a new breed of short-form comedy and give rise to a group of heartthrob stars, Vine is struggling. Marketers and ad buyers that paid creators to make “sponsored” Vines have soured on the app, which is owned by Twitter, and are directing dollars toward competitors like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Video creators frustrated with Vine have followed the ad money, and some of the top “Viners” rarely post anymore as they focus on their other social media accounts.
How Corporations Profit From Black Teens’ Viral Content | The FADER
That the speed and relative borderlessness of the internet makes cross-platform, global dissemination seem like a consequence of tech is a convenient amnesia.
(Source: thefader.com)
If the future will be a distributed one, Fusion wants to make sure it’s prepared.
The digital news site and cable network for millennials on Monday announced a new team to create stories and videos meant to be read and watched exclusively on social platforms. The social newsroom of 12 people includes eight who are focused on Snapchat alone. Others work on Instagram and Vine. Fusion hired Laura Feinstein, a former editor in chief of Vice’s Intel-backed Creator’s Project, to lead the group.
Kids focus on the community. Digital stars are always in your pocket, always available for oversharing; because the viewing experience is so handheld and interstitial, it feels less like vegging with “NCIS” than like carrying around a newborn puppy. The viewing relationship is bilateral—digital stars take fans’ programming ideas and regularly answer their questions—and its promise is “I’m just like you.” Stardom used to be predicated on a mystique derived from scarcity; you don’t really know much about George Clooney. Now it’s predicated on a familiarity derived from ubiquity.
Read more in Hollywood and Vine in The New Yorker.
Poytner has a great roundup of some of the best examples of newsrooms and journalists using Vine, the new video tool from Twitter.



