2. Vine Street Confidential

Summary

Podcast Summary – Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

Episode 2: Vine Street Confidential

Date: April 22, 2025
Host: Benedict Townsend

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the story behind Vine’s explosive rise—a platform that revolutionized video content and culture in just six seconds. Host Benedict Townsend explores the origins of Vine, the creative spark that defined its unique style, and the confluence of creators, founders, and business interests that both rocketed it to fame and sowed seeds of its decline. With first-hand accounts from the app’s founders and early adopters, listeners gain an inside look at how Vine’s simple idea spawned a new kind of internet celebrity and changed the ecosystem forever.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The 1600 Vine Street Creator House: Epicenter of Influence (00:02–05:32)

• Setting the Scene: 2015 Los Angeles, 1600 Vine Street, meeting of Vine’s biggest creators (the Paul brothers, friends, pranksters).
• Monetization & Fame:
  • Jake Paul explains how competition with his brother Logan led to Vine stardom, monetization, and Hollywood opportunities.

    "We were in a competition to see who could have the most followers…then it just took off from there…The money started growing and growing..." – Jake Paul (01:45)

  • Creators transformed Vine into a viable business, commanding lucrative deals from advertisers and touring.
• Turning Point:
  • A pivotal 2015 meeting with Twitter (Vine’s owner) where creators demand compensation or threaten to leave, highlighting tension between platforms and creators:

    "We want to be paid, and we want to be paid big. And if we aren't, well, we'll walk." – Benedict Townsend (04:17)

• The New Kind of Celebrity:
  • Early “creator houses” were innovation hubs, setting precedent for contemporary influencer collectives.

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Invention & Essence of Vine (05:32–11:08)

• Innovation in User Experience:
  • Rich Arnold details Vine’s distinctive UI, emphasizing ease-of-use and creative limitations:

    "You hold anywhere on the screen and it records...that was not a thing anyone was doing." – Rich Arnold (05:44)

  • The “DIY aesthetic” democratized creativity, forcing users to record in-app with minimal editing.
• Media Convergence:
  • Taylor Lorenz recounts early excitement and the app’s viral potential:

    "Within a couple days I was in Grand Central Station...and it made the popular page. That was like a huge deal for me at the time." – Taylor Lorenz (07:45)

• Challenge of Six Seconds:
  • The constraint was a catalyst for invention—users had to “make something good” in a tiny timeframe.

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Tracking Down the Founders & Vine’s Origin Story (07:57–11:08)

• Founders Identified:
  • Dom Hoffman (elusive), Russ Yusupov (interviewed in this episode), and Colin Kroll (passed away in 2018).

    "Colin is not here anymore...he actually died in 2018 of an accidental drug overdose..." – Taylor Lorenz (08:21)

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Russ Yusupov Interview – The Making of Vine (11:08–29:56)

Why Six Seconds? (11:08–12:33)

• Russ shares the reasoning:
  • Experimented with lengths; six seconds ideal for concise storytelling (beginning, middle, end).

    "...Six felt right...long enough that you could make something of substance, short enough that it was really quick to upload..." – Russ Yusupov (11:08)

• Constraint inspired creativity, echoing Twitter’s 140 characters or Instagram’s square images.

Russ’s Design Philosophy & Early Career (12:33–16:30)

• Background:
  • Came to U.S. as a child from the USSR.
  • Early work included Nike+ app, Hulu logo, and founding his own mobile app studio.
  • Emphasis on “designer as author”—bringing personal voice into technology:

    "Designer as author. So how do you create your own design work from your own voice and have that personal connection…" – Russ Yusupov (15:11)

The Founding Team and Product Genesis (15:45–19:15)

• Partnerships:

  • Met Dom Hoffman in tech communities and firms, collaborating on Hulu redesign.
  • Shared vision: make creating videos on mobile phones easier and more enjoyable.
  • Sought to solve issues with video length, difficulty uploading on slow networks.

    "A lot of videos ended up being minutes long. Uploading those videos was really painful..." – Russ Yusupov (16:38)

• Inspiration from GIF Tools:

  • Influenced by “Gift Shop” app, evolved to add audio and looping.

• Technical Co-founder:

  • Colin Kroll brought in to build infrastructure, enabling scale.

Funding & Launch – The Non-Pitch Pitch (19:15–22:13)

• Funding Journey:
  • Secured VC Adam Ludwin’s support early; demoed product instead of using a pitch deck.
• Twitter Enters:
  • Twitter acquires Vine for $30 million pre-launch (October 2012).
  • Founders faced criticism for selling “too early” but expressed no regrets.

Features that Changed the Internet (22:42–26:31)

• Vine’s Major Innovations:
  • Autoplay & Looping Video: Features now ubiquitous on platforms like TikTok and Instagram began here.

    "YouTube started autoplaying videos, and pretty much every other video platform started doing the same." – Russ Yusupov (22:58)

  • The loop not only made content endlessly consumable, but inspired new comic and narrative forms.

    "Adding the loop felt natural, and it also unlocked quite a bit of creative potential for the art form…" – Russ Yusupov (24:53)

  • Minor “cheats” (6.3-second actual length) gave creators wiggle-room for timing punchlines.

Naming the Product (26:31–27:37)

• Rejected Names: Vibe, Bloom, Mood, Verse.
• Trademark Woes: Briefly forced to switch to “Verse” before launch; reverted to Vine last-minute.

Launch & Cultural Impact (27:37–29:56)

• Launch Day:
  • Emotional, high stakes, engineering fears of crashing—but succeeded.
  • For Russ, the journey from Soviet-born immigrant to influencing global culture was profound.

    "If someone told me when I was five years old…that Fine had…influenced Internet media and culture…I probably would have said, oh, wow, cool. Amazing. America is great." – Russ Yusupov (28:35)

  • His parents only fully grasped the achievement once local community papers featured him.

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The Cultural Shift: Virality and Power Struggles (29:56–31:12)

• What Came Next:
  • After public launch, Vine exploded among users.
  • Creators began forming cliques (‘cartels’), perfecting the art of virality, and reshaping fame:

    "It was all kind of merging into one big cartel kind of thing." – Russ Yusupov (30:37)

  • Creativity, rivalry, risk-taking—the “Wild West” era of Vine is teased for the following episode.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Monetization and Influence:

  "If you have millions of fans and you can convert even 5% of them…you're in the seven figure range." – Jake Paul (02:25)

• On Creative Constraints:

  "On the Internet, creativity is boundless. But some of these formats that do restrict what you can do really help inspire people." – Russ Yusupov (11:08)

• On Tech Industry Shifts:

  "A pretty unique time in tech in New York…things were starting to take off…but, like, the grown ups hadn't shown up yet." – Rich Arnold (06:10)

• On Vine’s Lasting Impact:

  "After launching Vine, YouTube started autoplaying videos, and pretty much every other video platform started doing the same." – Russ Yusupov (22:58)

• On Founders’ Regrets:

  "Our investors complained to us to this day that we sold too early…No regrets." – Russ Yusupov (21:55)

• On Cultural Validation:

  "When we were on the cover of the local community newspaper in Russian, my mom called me. She’s like, wow, I’m so proud of you, son. Amazing." – Russ Yusupov (29:56)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:02 – Introduction and the 1600 Vine Creator House
• 01:45 – Jake Paul on monetizing Vine fame
• 04:17 – Creators’ standoff with Twitter
• 05:32 – Why Vine’s UI mattered
• 07:45 – Taylor Lorenz’s first viral Vine
• 11:08 – Russ Yusupov: Why six seconds?
• 15:11 – Russ on creative control and design
• 16:38 – Tackling the problem of mobile video
• 19:26 – Vine’s fundraising and prototype demo
• 21:12 – Twitter acquires Vine; aftermath
• 22:58 – The birth of autoplay and looping video
• 26:31 – Origin of the name 'Vine'
• 27:49 – Vine's launch day
• 28:35 – Russ on his immigrant journey and cultural impact
• 30:37 – Early Vine creator “cartels” and emerging power dynamics
• 31:03 – Teaser for next episode

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Episode Tone & Style

• Benedict Townsend: Witty, irreverent, storytelling with a blend of awe and irony.
• Guest voices: Open, nostalgic, candid about the chaos and genius of the early Vine days.
• General Atmosphere: Engaging, fast-paced, both reverent and mischievous—mirroring the cultural spirit of Vine itself.

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Summary

This episode of Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World provides a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes account of how Vine was conceptualized, built, and launched, and how it heralded a seismic shift in the online creator economy. By closely following the personal journey of Russ Yusupov and tracing Vine’s technical and cultural innovations, this story reveals the blueprint for modern social media and the consequences—both creative and chaotic—of digital revolution. The promise and peril of Vine are set to unfold further in upcoming episodes as creators, platforms, and audiences collide.

Transcript

[Benedict Townsend]

This is a Global Player original podcast. It's a bright day in Los Angeles, California in autumn 2015. And in a building just a stone's throw from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a meeting is about to change the course of history. It's taking place in the conference room of an apartment block where a group of online creators live and make videos together. The address, 1600 Vine Street. The name is no coincidence. The 18 people in this room are Vine's biggest stars. The most popular faces of a platform that, though none of them realise it yet, is just months away from total collapse. If you were Anywhere online in the 2010s, you'd probably recognise the building when its modern apartments, overlooking public courtyards with views of Hollywood were the backdrop to the Internet's most viral videos. And you definitely recognize a few of the people in the room. A tight knit crew of attractive, barely 20 somethings known for cross posting videos of pranks and sketch comedy. Excuse me, man in the muscle shirt.

[Rich Arnold]

Did you get any muscles with that shirt?

[Benedict Townsend]

Help me first.

[Russ Yusupov]

I'll save you. Woohoo.

[Rich Arnold]

He's already gone.

[Russ Yusupov]

Yeah, but that backflip though. What's up guys?

[Jake Paul]

I'm just chilling with my boy Jerome.

[Russ Yusupov]

My name's not Jerome, you stupid white mother.

[Benedict Townsend]

Sure, most of us were uploading dumb homemade videos back then, but the 1600 Viners, spearheaded by two shaggy haired brothers named Logan and Jake Paul, turned it into a business. The guys you're about to meet have more followers than the biggest celebrities. And just one post can earn tens of thousands from advertisers.

[Jake Paul]

The way we got started on vine is my brother and I were in a competition to see who could have the most followers. And we Both had like 200 followers and I had more. And I was like, dude, I'm gonna get more followers than you. And he was like, no. And then it just took off from there. When I told my friends, yeah guys, like, let's go make a Vine. Like I wanna be vine famous. And they're like in high school, they wanna play football or whatever. They're like, yeah, okay Logan, go ahead, be vine famous. So that's how it started out. And then started getting phone calls, being like, yo, promote my app. Eventually the money started growing and growing and growing. And then eventually people were like, come out to Los Angeles and be in my TV show. Audition for this. I want to be your manager. I want to be your agent. It all started happening so fast.

[Benedict Townsend]

Yeah.

[Jake Paul]

As you get more and more popular and start to build a brand name for yourself in the space, you start working with big Fortune 500 companies, merchandising deals you can tour. So there's a lot of ways to monetize, but if you have millions of fans and you can convert like even 5% of them to pay for something of yours, you're in the seven figure range.

[Benedict Townsend]

Yep, that's the same Jake Paul who boxed Mike Tyson last November in what was the most streamed sporting event in history. He reportedly earned over $40 million for that. Declaring your winner by unanimous decision. Jake Paul. The Paul brothers remain two of the biggest social media influencers in the world. And it was the frat house ecosystem they built on 1600 Vine street that started it all. It was one of the earliest and most successful content creator houses. Shared living spaces where they could collaborate to create content that collectively built their brands. It catapulted the brothers and their buddies next door to global fame. Soon, that kid from that video. Oh, my God, it's that kid. They were getting guest spots on TV shows, signing major movie deals. They were inking brand partnerships to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Russ Yusupov]

So you're worth on all the money.

[Benedict Townsend]

These companies pay you?

[Jake Paul]

To be honest, I'm worth three times.

[Rich Arnold]

The amount of getting paid.

[Benedict Townsend]

It was the dawn of a new kind of celebrity. And whether you loved them or hated them, at one point, you couldn't escape them. But I'm getting ahead of myself. On this fateful day in 2015, the 1600 Viners have arranged a meeting with representatives from Twitter to the social media giant that owns Vine. Their demand is simple. We want to be paid, and we want to be paid big. And if we aren't, well, we'll walk. Abandoning vine en masse, taking our quite sizable followings with us, willingly decapitating the app's greatest source of popularity, you might be thinking, don't let the door hit you on the way out, but these guys are deadly serious. This meeting is the culmination of years of frustration, renumeration for everything they feel they've given to a platform that's long neglected them. How did it go? Well, hold your horses, folks. There's a whole episode about that. But let's just put it this way. When was the last time you opened Vine? Okay, so how in the bloody heavens did we get here? A bunch of teenage pranksters have Twitter, one of the world's biggest social media giants with a multi billion dollar market cap. By the proverbial, I mean, can I say balls. Balls feels wrong. Imagine I'm saying a classier version of Balls. They're not even past the legal drinking age, but they're holding vine, an app invention that has revolutionized social media, as we know, for ransom. Well, dear listener, to understand how we got here, we have to go back to when and how it all started. The thing that made vine interesting, that made the app so popular so quickly, wasn't just that it let you edit videos on your phone, but the creative challenge it posed to the public. You have six seconds now. Make something good.

[Rich Arnold]

Yeah, it was kind of like a big thing in the office that everyone just order was discovering it at the same time. We were, like, passing around the phone and playing around with it.

[Benedict Townsend]

Freelance tech designer Rich Arnold also remembers the buzz when vine landed.

[Rich Arnold]

Design, where, you know, you hold anywhere on the screen and it records and then, like, when you let go, you're creating these cuts, was very, like, unique and interesting at the time. And my, to be totally frank, my immediate first thought was like, okay, I gotta rip this off or something.

[Benedict Townsend]

If, you know, American accents, you might be able to pick up on Rich's New Jersey twang. He'll play a bigger role later in our story, but at this point, he's just moved to the city to pursue his tech career, which back then wasn't exactly a thing on the East Coast. It was another way that Vime was already breaking.

[Rich Arnold]

The MO in general is much more of like a, like a California thing. I think one of the things that makes vine and other companies of that era kind of fun for me is that they represent, like, a pretty unique time in tech in New York, where they were sort of the first tech companies in New York where, like, things were starting to take off, the money had started to arrive, and there were, like, serious companies here, but, like, the grown ups hadn't shown up yet. So it was like a very, like, fun creative time in the space in New York. And it was meaningfully different than the way tech was operating in California at the time.

[Benedict Townsend]

What were the things about vine that felt, like, cool and new and odd and interesting?

[Rich Arnold]

I mean, from a design perspective, the capture methodology was, I think, really interesting and smart. Like, very simple. Like no ui, like there's no record button. I mean, that's like, you know, that was not a thing anyone was doing. Just like the sort of simplicity of it. You know, you could delete segments, but you couldn't edit the length of them. You know, you had to just sort of like, record and you get what you get and then you let go and then you record something else and you get what you get and sort of created this like DIY kind of aesthetic. You couldn't upload from your phone, which was also nice. I was forced to do it in camera. And so it was this sort of like democratizing way of creating content where it just feels like this moment that you're living in.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Well, as a tech reporter, I heard about it, obviously, when Twitter acquired it pre launch, it was in beta. The day that it exited beta, I downloaded it.

[Benedict Townsend]

Taylor Lorenz is a celebrated tech journalist, well known for her coverage of Vine. So it seems fitting that she was one of the first to experience the 6 second phenomenon.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Within a couple days I was in Grand Central Station and I recorded this like stop motion kind of animation thing of people walking through the big hall of Grand Central Station, and it made the popular page. And that was like a huge deal for me at the time.

[Benedict Townsend]

You know, for one of the single most consequential online products in modern history, very little is actually known about Vine's origin story. We know it went big, we know it went bust, but where in the heavens did it actually come from? Well, the only way to figure it out is by finding a founder. But according to my producer Mary, that's not as easy as it sounds. Okay, Mary, three founders. Who are they? What do we know about them?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yes, so the three founders are Dom Hoffman, Russ Yusupoff, and Colin Kroll. So let's start with Colin Kroll. It's a sad start to our quest, unfortunately, because Colin is not here anymore. He was a computer scientist. He made his name with vine and then later HQ trivia, but he actually died in 2018 of an accidental drug overdose, almost two years after vine was shut down. So that leaves us with Dom and Russ.

[Benedict Townsend]

Okay, so Dom Hoffman, what's his vibe?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, Dom, interesting guy, quite elusive. Yes, A little inconveniently elusive for our purposes. He's got an incredibly sparse Wikipedia page and an even sparser personal website.

[Benedict Townsend]

Couldn't quite believe his personal website. I think there's maybe 20 words total on the whole website. It doesn't feel like a man who's aching to be contacted very much not.

[Taylor Lorenz]

And we have tried. We've. We've reached out on every single platform.

[Benedict Townsend]

Lord, we have tried.

[Taylor Lorenz]

We've sent little moles into Silicon Valley.

[Benedict Townsend]

You've got an indication now that maybe the answer is no.

[Taylor Lorenz]

So I tapped into a grapevine and I have been led to believe that a message from us has been put in front of his face and still nothing.

[Benedict Townsend]

Okay.

[Taylor Lorenz]

I think that that's a no.

[Benedict Townsend]

Fair enough. We can close the book on Dom. So that leaves us with Russ Yusupov. What do we know about Russ?

[Taylor Lorenz]

So Russ a bit more promising. There's quite a lot about him online. After vine, he founded HQ Trivia along with Colin. So it's got a bit more of a presence and we have actually managed.

[Benedict Townsend]

To have human contact with him quite surprisingly. I just cold emailed and I said hello, would you like to be on my podcast? Obviously did not expect to get reply. And then like six weeks later in my inbox. Boop boop. Hi, yeah, Russ would maybe like to talk.

[Taylor Lorenz]

We now have an agreed time and place for an interview.

[Benedict Townsend]

Yes, the time is ten minutes from now. Yes, the place is here.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Exactly. And he's. I've had WhatsApp communication with him this morning which has given me reason to believe that he is going to show up.

[Benedict Townsend]

Okay, so all things being equal, we should be talking to Russ in about 10 minutes. Dear listener, if the next voice you hear is Russ, we did it. If it's not, well, you know, we tried.

[Russ Yusupov]

All right, test one too.

[Benedict Townsend]

Can you hear me?

[Russ Yusupov]

Yes. No, no, I could hear you.

[Benedict Townsend]

Surprise, he turned up. Russ Yusupov, vine founder in the flesh. Yeah, Russ, excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here. Well, not in the flesh so much as. Sat in New York chatting with me over video. But there he is. Jet black hair peppered with gray, black T shirt, professional looking microphone, a tasteful potted plant behind him. But he does quickly disable his video. Like any good reporter, I kick things off with a hard hitter. Why six seconds?

[Russ Yusupov]

So we get this question a lot. We experimented with all lengths up to 30 seconds, 10 seconds, even down to 2 seconds. Six felt right. It also is easily subdivided into three 2 second clips. So you can create a video with like a beginning, a middle and an end, which kind of felt right as like a narrative format. But we did experiment with many lengths. Six ended up feeling long enough that you could make something of substance, short enough that it was really quick to upload and really quick to download. Yes, on the Internet, creativity is boundless. But some of these formats that do restrict what you can do really help inspire people. Whether it's Twitter's 140 characters or Instagram's square photos, or even Snapchat's disappearing photos, or kind of a creative constraint. The difference between a boring video and something that's really captivating is like editing. Like you can cut from one shot to another and use that juxtaposition to tell a story and to create meaning. So that's what we focused on. But we knew it had to be more of an Internet aesthetic. And on the Internet, things are faster, things are snappier, and we made them square because we wanted to kind of remove as much decision making from the creator as possible.

[Benedict Townsend]

Simplicity, the heart of any good idea. And Russ had a lot of those. You know, there's a lot of hype around tech founders, a lot of mythology. But before vine was even a thing, Russ's portfolio of work was already intimidatingly impressive.

[Russ Yusupov]

I started my career as an interaction designer. I designed the very first version of the Nike plus iPhone app. I also designed the very first version of Hulu.com as well as the Hulu logo in 2007. And in 2009, I started my own mobile app studio called Big Human. I still design mobile apps and UI every single day. Focused pretty much on the interface layer, right? Thinking about how to craft the best user experiences for people to do things in new ways.

[Benedict Townsend]

For someone who would soon hit entrepreneurial mega stardom, Russ Story probably doesn't start where you'd expect.

[Russ Yusupov]

I am an immigrant from the USSR and moved to New York in 1989 as a little kid and grew up in Queens and Manhattan until the age of five.

[Benedict Townsend]

Russ was a child of communism growing up in the USSR in what is now Tajikistan. In 1989, a couple of years before the Soviet Union collapsed, his family joined thousands of others in a huge migration wave out of the country. But his family didn't just leave the ussr. They moved to the very heart of capitalism itself, New York City. But it wasn't Wall street that captured young Russ's imagination.

[Russ Yusupov]

I've always been interested in art and design, especially being in New York. I was really influenced by people who, I guess considered themselves to be artists. And, you know, being around people that sang and danced and played instruments and painted, you know, like that gave me the inspiration and that perspective to see the world through the eyes of, like, people who were deeply inspired by creative tools and the creative act.

[Benedict Townsend]

When it came time to find a job, design was a natural fit for Russ. And it's maybe not what you'd expect from a tech founder in a world of Bill Gates characters building computers and writing code in their family garage. Russ. More artistic leanings stood out. But friends sought him out for design work for their tech startups, and he was in the right place at the right time. It was 2009, right in the middle of the financial crisis, but the tech Industry was surviving and thriving. Along the way, Russ picked up an important lesson. To have the freedom to properly pursue your own ideas the way you wanted. You needed to be your own boss. You needed to be a founder.

[Russ Yusupov]

Yes, I think in design school at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, I was taught that designers are very entrepreneurial and self starters. So the main foundational principle in my education there was around designer as author. So how do you create your own design work from your own voice and have that personal connection to your work?

[Benedict Townsend]

Russ wanted creative control over his next project, but he needed partners. The first to join him was Dom Hoffman.

[Russ Yusupov]

We had met on the Internet, I think in the late 90s, early 2000s, as part of a community of digital creators, if you will. Before social media, people used to come together on the Internet through message boards. That's how I met Dom. We were both interested in the same things. Heavy metal music, video games, flash websites, web design, 3D modeling and 3D art. And then in 2006, 2007, we started working at the same firm in New York and collaborated on the first version of hulu.com and we redesigned cnn.com and other other projects together. It was, yeah, it was a really great collaborative relationship and we were close friends.

[Benedict Townsend]

Russ and Dom seem to have one of those friendships where it just feels like your brains are in sync. Excited by the same questions, fascinated in solving the same problems.

[Russ Yusupov]

At the time, Dom and I were working on different video technologies, right? We were thinking like, how do we make watching TV better? You know, what would a TV channel that was personalized to you look like? And we were constantly looking at other video experiences. And there was this one particular problem that we were interested in solving. It was like, how do we help people make a video on their phones easier and more enjoyable? Because at the time around 2012, making a video on your phone involved like holding your phone horizontally. You know, you just like had endless seconds to record. So a lot of videos ended up being minutes long. And then uploading those videos was really painful. Like 3G cell networks were pretty slow. So it took, you know, half hour to upload a video that was a couple minutes long. And then downloading that video and watching it was just as painful of an experience. The video wasn't that interesting, right? And the payoff was just wasn't that great.

[Benedict Townsend]

Remember, social media in 2012 wasn't the moving feast of crisp, high definition videos we have on our phones today. It was pretty much all photos, which, you know, if your 3G held out, took a Couple seconds to actually come into focus. Videos. Well, those were for desktop, when you had decent wifi. And so the first seed of vine began to sprout.

[Russ Yusupov]

Yeah, we fell in love with the idea pretty much immediately after that spark.

[Benedict Townsend]

At what point did you make the decision to go, oh, this seems like a nice idea to we should try and make this. Maybe this could be something.

[Russ Yusupov]

So, you know, we're also looking around at different creation tools, and we found one that one of our peers, Dan Savage, had created called Gift Shop. And it let you make a GIF on your phone in a really simple way. And we thought, well, what if we used some of these learnings and help people make a video? Right? So let's help you capture more frames, include audio, and let that play back on a loop, just like a gif.

[Benedict Townsend]

Dom and Russ needed one final piece to their puzzle. A programmer who could actually build an engine capable of powering the vehicle. That's where Colin, the third founder, comes in.

[Russ Yusupov]

We had invited Colin shortly after founding vine to. To help develop the back end and the. The technical infrastructure.

[Benedict Townsend]

And did. Did you feel that there was an element of risk in sort of putting your eggs in that basket, or were you pretty certain about Vine?

[Russ Yusupov]

We were pretty certain about Vine. We knew we had something special. We knew that all of the friends and people that we gave the prototype to enjoyed it just as much as we did, and that there was something, something there, something with big potential.

[Benedict Townsend]

In June 2012, the company was officially founded. They were going for it, but nothing gets made without some cash, and that takes finding funders. Luckily, they had a head start.

[Russ Yusupov]

We started programming the prototype, and we were introduced to a venture capitalist, Adam Ludwin, and he was very interested in what we were working on and said, whatever you guys do next, I want to support it.

[Benedict Townsend]

With a VC relationship already solidified, Russ and the team were able to push ahead without the usual monetary headaches of other startups.

[Russ Yusupov]

And he was in those early meetings when we came up with the idea for Vine. He was very quick to write us a check, and he was very quick to introduce us to his other VC friends. The pitch. We never really had a pitch deck. We simply just invited them to the beta and they were able to just use the app and see if they liked it for themselves and see if they saw potential.

[Benedict Townsend]

The beta, if you don't know, is an early form of a product that you can kind of test and try out. You see, they never pitched Vine. They just let people play with it. And the results spoke for Themselves. Checks were being signed before the six seconds had even elapsed.

[Russ Yusupov]

The VC funding just allowed us to build without feeling like, oh, we're taking on so much risk, spending all of our own money. We knew we were in good hands, and we knew we had the Runway to keep experimenting and keep working on the thing.

[Benedict Townsend]

You might have noticed that Russ doesn't exactly get excited about much or seemingly anything. He's a classic inventor, more concerned with production than with popularity. And the product. The product was good. Like, really, really good. The biggest names in tech were coming knocking. The stakes had never been higher, and investors urged caution. They advised Russ and the team to let the experts handle the negotiations. But they didn't listen. Enter big daddy Twitter. The tech giant with deep pockets, global ambitions, and a deal that, for better or worse, would change everything.

[Russ Yusupov]

Yeah, Dom, Collin and I, we went out to San Francisco. We met with Twitter leadership over the course of, I think a day or two back and forth with our attorneys and our accountants, but not with the VCs.

[Benedict Townsend]

Is this like, you know, in this era of tech, are you thinking we should wear suits? Or is it like, we got to go tech casual? I'm just trying to picture what that room is like, you know?

[Russ Yusupov]

Yeah, well, we were wearing button downs tucked into jeans and nice shoes. Okay.

[Benedict Townsend]

But you were like, this is the big leagues. We better break out the button down. Exactly, my friend. Twitter did not only invest, they bought the whole bloody thing. Was there any ever. Any other offers from other companies?

[Russ Yusupov]

Nope. And our investors complained to us to this day that we sold too early. We should have, you know, should have said no to Twitter and grown it much bigger than we did at the time of sale. It felt right at the time. No regrets.

[Benedict Townsend]

On 9 October 2012, Twitter acquired Vine for $30 million. The two sailed off into the sunset and everything went smoothly. Well, not exactly, but we'll get to that. Let's stick with Russ and the gang for now. Well, I mean, you sound quite cool about it now, but, I mean, as you say, you were guys in your 20s. You've got one of the biggest companies in the world throwing money at you. There must have been a bit of champagne popping or chest bumping or something going on.

[Russ Yusupov]

It was a proud moment for us. We did celebrate.

[Benedict Townsend]

More exciting for the team was preparing vine to launch to the global public. It had come a long way since that initial spark of an idea from Russ and Dom. But even in its early form, the app had features and design no one had ever really seen before. Stuff that would change the face of the Internet for forever.

[Russ Yusupov]

For a while in the vine prototype, you had to tap on the video to load it before it played. And being inspired by GIFs, we made the decision to just make them play automatically and load automatically. So when we started loading a video before it entered the viewport, to make the experience even faster, so while you're watching a video, the next video would already start loading. And we made it autoplay, which was another innovation that didn't exist on the Internet before Vine. After launching Vine, YouTube started autoplaying videos, and pretty much every other video platform started doing the same. And this endless feed of videos became part of the core experience of Vine.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Can we pause on this a second? Because I don't think I knew that vine were the first to do Autoplay.

[Benedict Townsend]

Yeah, definitely the first to popularize it, which is kind of crazy when you think of the ripple effect onto the world today.

[Taylor Lorenz]

I mean, autoplay has changed so many things, and that is so much something that you just. You do just think is part of the inevitable course of the Internet. But they were the first to do that, definitely.

[Benedict Townsend]

I mean, yeah, it's one of those inventions that once you have it, you can't imagine life without it. But, I mean, how many articles are written every day about how Autoplay video is breaking our brains, destroying us?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of. I'm really impressed, but I'm also a little bit furious with them because.

[Benedict Townsend]

But I guess it's a Pandora's box thing, right? Like, if they didn't invent it, maybe someone else would have. I don't know how much blame you can lay at their feet. Could they have really known back then what they were unleashing? I'm always hung up that they popularized looping video, because looping video, now it's synonymous with TikTok. But, you know, in 2013, that was basically witchcraft. You want to watch a video, you hit play, you watch it to the end, and it ends. But by removing a beginning and the end, you kind of stretch the concept of a video entirely into something else. It's not an obvious idea, necessarily.

[Russ Yusupov]

You know, we were inspired by gifts, but we also felt like these really short videos left a lot to be desired. When you got to the end of them, it was just like, oh, is that it? So adding the loop felt natural, and it also unlocked quite a bit of creative potential for the art form and that people can now start playing with with that loop and many comedic formats. On vine, people used the punchline as the beginning of the video. Right. So, you know, we say that the videos are six seconds, but they're actually just a bit longer than six seconds. We found that people liked to record videos just up until this fraction of a second at the end of the progress indicator for how much video you've recorded. And people thought that they had a lot more time left in the video than they actually did. So we allowed people to overshoot to like 6.3 or 6 and a half seconds. And then in the video player within vine, that's where the magic was really built in to make that video loop seamlessly.

[Benedict Townsend]

That's interesting, because I've heard this mention that it's longer than six seconds, but I thought that it was longer than six to facilitate the loop. But actually it's sort of to trick the user in a positive way into making them think they've got enough time.

[Russ Yusupov]

Right. People always thought they had a lot more time left when there's just that little bit of space remaining in the progress indicator. They thought they had time for, like, a few more words or the punchline. So we let them overshoot.

[Benedict Townsend]

Remember that little tidbit for your next pub quiz? But enough shop talk, let's jump back into the story. So vine had money, they had the backer, and they had some very exciting features. But the team were barreling towards a launch without one crucial element, a name. It was Dom who first suggested Vine. Can you remember any of the rejected names?

[Russ Yusupov]

Yes. Vibe, Bloom, Mood. Yeah, those are just a few of them, but we have a whole list of rejected names. Funny story, just before we launched vine under Twitter, Twitter's trademark attorneys gave us a call and said, hey, There is a vine.com which is an E commerce website that may have issue with vine as a video app. And we had to scramble and rename the app. We renamed it Verse. For a brief while, we created a whole new logo, changed every instance of vine in the app to Verse. But just the day before we were due to launch, we changed it back to vine and said, you know, screw it, we'll take the risk.

[Benedict Townsend]

On 23 January 2013, just three months after Twitter bought it out, vine was in the greasy little palms of the public. This was make or break. I mean, what do you remember of launch day?

[Russ Yusupov]

Excitement, a bit of unease. The engineering team was probably most on edge because they were concerned about keeping the service up and making sure that we can scale the service to meet the demand. This rush of downloads and users, but mostly excitement. We were happy to get it out, and we knew it was the beginning. Yeah, there was definitely champagne on launch day.

[Benedict Townsend]

The engineering team's efforts paid off. Vine didn't crash. It was a dream come true for Russ because, I mean, you personally, you'd come from the former ussr and now you're sort of. You've come to the US and, you know, basically conquered this massive US Tech company. Does that feel like a sort of personal hero's journey for you?

[Russ Yusupov]

If someone told me when I was five years old that, you know, the work that I would do in my twenties would go on to, like, influence Internet media and culture in the way that Fine had, I probably would have said, oh, wow, cool. Amazing. America is great. It's. It's great to kind of have that freedom and that opportunity to just like, build and create companies and to do things that have never been been done before and have that impact. I don't think I would have been able to do that if I was in, like, communism. Not. Not really possible in communism.

[Benedict Townsend]

Was your family. Could they. Could they comprehend at the time? Were they. Were they proud?

[Russ Yusupov]

I mean, like my parents, they knew that what I was doing was interesting and special, but not really in a detailed way. It wasn't until people from their community, you know, gave them accolades and gave them praise that they understood it, right. I had sent them articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and CNN about the vine launch and what we were doing. And I remember my mom saying, oh, that's nice, son. Like, that's great. But then when we were on the COVID of the local community newspaper in Russian, my mom called me. She's like, wow, I'm so proud of you, son. Amazing.

[Benedict Townsend]

From the imagination of its three founders. In no time at all, vine was in the hands of the public. But never in their wildest dreams or worst nightmares could they have predicted the eruption brewing beneath their feet. How their little easy to record, easy to share video tool would disrupt celebrity, revolutionize entertainment, change the way we live online, and die all too soon. As any founder will tell you, it's not the creator that defines what an app does. It's the user. And on the horizon, Viners were amassing. It was all kind of merging into.

[Russ Yusupov]

One big cartel kind of thing.

[Benedict Townsend]

If you don't mean, it was brilliant. Vine was a new frontier, and some of its earliest creators were the first to crack the code of going viral. But what made some soar while others faded into the scroll in the next episode, the scrappy, weird, wild west days of early vine and the pioneers who turned six Seconds into a new kind of fame. It was more dangerous, I think that was.

[Russ Yusupov]

That was fun about it.

[Benedict Townsend]

You needed to make sure that was perfect. You had to get it. You had to get it.

[Russ Yusupov]

If you didn't, you were screwed.

[Benedict Townsend]

You can listen to vine six Seconds that Changed the World on Global Player, download it from the App Store, or go to globalplayer.com vine 6 seconds that changed the World is a Global Original Podcast created and hosted by me, Benedict Townsend and produced by my co creator Mary Goodheart, narrative and creative by producer Kevia Cardoso, score and sound design by Patrick Lee and mix by Chris James. Sophie Snelling is the Executive producer, Al Riddell is head of Factual Podcasts and Vicki Etchels is Director of Podcasts at Global. This is a Global Player Original Podcast.