7. The Battle of Vine Street

Summary

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

Episode 7: The Battle of Vine Street

Date: May 6, 2025
Host: Benedict Townsend
Podcast Description: The inside story of Vine, the social media app that shaped—and was outpaced by—the modern internet. In this episode, Benedict tracks down pivotal movers at the moment Vine’s future was transformed: the high-stakes showdown between Vine’s creators and management at 1600 Vine Street.

---

Episode Overview

This episode centers on a dramatic, transformative confrontation in late 2015 between Vine’s top creators (the “1600 group,” named for their infamous Vine Street address in LA) and Vine’s management. At stake: the platform’s very future, the possibility of creator payment, and the aftermath that would eventually seal Vine’s fate. Through interviews with former Vine staff, creators, and industry insiders, the episode unpacks the hyper-charged tensions, miscommunications, and industry inexperience that led to chaos—and Vine's demise.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: 1600 Vine Street Summit

• [00:24] Benedict Townsend sets the stage: It’s autumn 2015, and Vine management meets with top creators at 1600 Vine Street, the epicenter of collaborative Vine content.
• Top creators include Jake Paul, Marcus Johns, and others. Notably absent: Logan Paul and King Bach (“He’s just one of those like, I’m a nice guy and I want to surround myself with nice things...he wasn’t going to participate but wanted to benefit from whatever it was they negotiated.” — Karen, [03:23]).

2. Creators Flex Their Power

• The 1600 group had unprecedented leverage—“A group of barely 20-something internet goofballs...holding one of Twitter’s biggest products for ransom.” (Benedict, [10:11]).
• They recognized their role as the lifeblood of Vine: If they stopped posting, the app would wither.

3. The Central Grievance: Payment

• Twitter had forbidden Vine from directly compensating creators, fearing demands to also pay for tweets (Karen, [04:18]).
• Despite creators making substantial external income, they felt “unheard and unseen” by the platform (Karen, [05:10]), fueling frustrations.

4. Proposal & Negotiation Breakdown

• Marcus Johns fronts a proposal: top creators will deliver three Vines a week for “a million dollars” ([12:39]).

• Initially, Karen and the Vine team believed this was a million dollars total—potentially a manageable sum to buy much-needed time.

  “So we left that meeting quite excited because we felt like a million dollars...we can do this.” (Karen, [13:02])

• Days later reality hit: the ask was a million dollars each—roughly $19 million ([15:07]).

  “They literally said, we will all make three Vines a week for a million dollars. And they just didn’t say that word ‘each’ in the room.” (Karen, [15:29])

5. Aftermath: Leaks, Uproar, and Exodus

• News of the negotiation spread rapidly, stoking jealousy and demands from other creators (“So much for that NDA...” Benedict, [16:45]).

• Vine, unwilling and unable to meet the asks, declined. The 1600 group followed through—redirecting audiences to Instagram and beginning a mass exodus ([17:17]).

  “...You empowered a hundred people to be the lifeline to the entire product. And then like when those people decide to use their leverage, you’re in deep shit...You hitched this entire thing on, you know, 20, 21 year olds...” (Rich Arnold, [17:31])

6. Was the Ask Unreasonable?

• In retrospect, some felt the creators’ value was significant—calculations show they could have commanded a million-dollar salary via traditional ad CPMs (Brendan McNerney, [19:15]):

  “That run rate’s over a million dollars a year...The audiences were well worth a million dollars, and they just didn’t click that.” (Brendan, [19:15])

7. Collapsing Community & Platform Decline

• The fallout fractured the creator community, with resentment over the “1600 group’s” monopolization. Smaller creators felt ignored (Brendan, [20:32]), while even those outside the clique questioned the entitlement and wisdom of the demands (Madon Matthews, [22:01]).
• The ecosystem suffered as collaborators and parody targets deserted; traffic and engagement plummeted ([24:39], [25:31], [25:47]).

8. Karen’s Desperate Push for a Plan B

• Vine staff tried to rally “Ivy Leaguers” and “sprouts” (the next generation of creators) with creator trips, brand collaborations—including an event with Michelle Obama ([27:02]).
• “Camp Unplug,” a Vine original series with creators who’d later become online stars, was a last hurrah.

9. Leadership Change & the Endgame

• In early 2016, a new GM was brought in apparently to “shut it down as gracefully as possible” (Karen, [28:43]).

• Employees recall bizarre, California-style “write down your fears and let them go” management exercises—while layoffs loomed (Rich Arnold, [29:43]).

  “A friend of mine, what she wrote was like: it’s too late. Like, you blew it. Basically, that’s what happens.” (Rich Arnold, [29:43])

10. The Casual Email That Ended Vine

• Employees were notified by an infamously flippant email (“Hey dudes, we’re going to do a midweek huddle tomorrow at 11am...would be rad if you could VC in...”—read aloud at [33:00]), signaling layoffs and shutdown.
• Staff gathered at a bar as news of Vine’s shutdown hit TV.

11. A Creative Era Ends

• For many, the end brought mixed feelings: sadness, relief, pride, and a sense of missed opportunity.

• Karen continued to distribute Vine merch and support creators; she mourns that Vine was only a “year or two ahead of its time”—if Twitter had shown more insight or commitment, Vine might have anticipated the TikTok era ([37:40]).

  “If every decision maker at Twitter was a regular vine user, then I think we would have had a lot more internal support...If we had had good leadership and we had had one more year, we could now be TikTok.” (Karen, [37:40])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Power Dynamic:

  “We knew that we needed to just like hear them out. Because there was several years of pain and frustration that had not been voiced.”
  — Karen ([02:53])

• The Reality of Leverage:

  “They knew that basically they wielded all of the power and all of the eyeballs and all of the audience, and that they could redirect that audience to Instagram and put us out of business quickly.”
  — Karen ([08:11])

• Perspective on Platform Fragility:

  “You created this culture where you empowered a hundred people to be the lifeline to the entire product. And then like when those people decide to use their leverage, you’re in deep shit...that’s your problem.”
  — Rich Arnold ([17:31])

• The Missed Opportunity:

  “I really think if we had good leadership and we had had one more year, we could now be TikTok and Congress wouldn’t be worried about...China.”
  — Karen ([37:40])

• The Absurd Casualness of Vine’s End:

  “Hey, dudes, we’re going to do a midweek huddle tomorrow at 11am...Would be rad if you could VC in.”
  — Shutdown email, read by Benedict Townsend ([33:00])

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 1600 Vine Street Meeting: [01:02] – [03:45]
• Twitter’s Hardline on Payment: [04:18] – [05:03]
• Creators Air Grievances: [05:10] – [06:18]
• Negotiation for Payment: [12:07] – [13:02]
• The Real Ask Revealed ($1M Each): [15:07] – [15:29]
• Fallout and Mass Departure: [16:45] – [17:17]
• Was $1M Each Justified?: [19:06] – [20:12]
• Broader Community Fracture: [20:32] – [22:01]
• Decline in Engagement: [24:39] – [25:47]
• Camp Unplug & New Creators: [27:02] – [28:00]
• Leadership Change & Offbeat “Fears” Exercise: [28:43] – [29:43]
• The Shutdown Email: [33:00]
• Karen’s Retrospective: [37:40]

---

Episode Tone & Style

Benedict and guests balance deep industry insight, wry humor, and clear-eyed nostalgia. There’s empathy for both the creators’ ambitions and the company’s growing pains, paired with incredulity at the sometimes bumbling, ad hoc nature of new media empires.

• “It was, if I can take some dramatic license, like a polite slow motion coup.” (Benedict, [11:39])
• “Not with a bang, but with an email. There we go. Vine’s dead.” (Benedict, [39:37])

---

Conclusion & Next Steps

The “Battle of Vine Street” proved to be both a creative labor action and the beginning of the end. The sacking of Vine’s creator elite—amid financial ignorance and corporate inflexibility—opened a wound that wouldn’t heal. As Benedict promises, the final episode will examine Vine’s autopsy, funeral, and lasting influence on the internet, revealing how much of today’s digital landscape—especially TikTok—grew from these very roots.

Next episode: The autopsy, the funeral, and the legacy of Vine.

---

For more, listen to the full series or contact the podcast at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Benedict Townsend]

This is a Global Player original podcast. Last time on vine. Six seconds that changed the world. Karen's jubilant rescue party ended on an ominous note.

[Karen]

At the end of the night, Marcus Johns came over to me and said, hey, everybody from 1600 vine would like to meet with you.

[Benedict Townsend]

It's a meeting that will shape the fate of vine and the Internet forever. 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.

[Karen]

So I went over with a couple of other people from vine the next day to have this meeting with them. And you know, it was like one of those kind of big glossy apartment complexes that also had a conference room that the residents could use. And so we were in this apartment conference room and it was like Jake, Paul and Marcus Johns and you know, every kind of top Viner at the time. They were all the people who made those vines at 1600 vine every day.

[Kenny Knox]

Hey, what's up man?

[Benedict Townsend]

How you doing?

[Karen]

How's it going?

[Benedict Townsend]

Marcus Johns. Marcus Johns, a Florida born vine star. He'd made it into the top five most followed people on vine, becoming a classic 1600 creator, churning out an impressive volume of collaborative comedy skits. He built a big profile with brands and even worked as a social media correspondent covering the 2014 Oscars. Red carpet, Angelina. Brad. Adopt me, please, please adopt me. I'm a good child. These days his vibe is a little different.

[Mary Goodheart]

I just wanted to say that being a daddy is the best thing that anyone can have happen to them.

[Benedict Townsend]

Now he posts about his wholesome family life on a farm in Nashville with his wife and kids, his riding of tractors. He has also diligently ignored every single attempt we have made to talk to him about this podcast. But the main thing you need to know is that at this point in our story, Marcus is the head of the 1600 group. Whether or not he would identify as such, he's basically become a union leader and he shouldn't be underestimated. He's got the vision and the charisma to unite Vine's biggest creators into a negotiating unit. And this has never been done before. Of course, that also meant that it was all new to Karen and her team. Walking into the meeting room, they had very little idea what to expect.

[Karen]

We knew that we needed to just like Hear them out. Because there was several years of pain and frustration that had not been voiced.

[Benedict Townsend]

You're in this sort of conference room, right? That's within the vine street complex, as you said.

[Karen]

Batch was the one who thought it would be clever to be a Viner and live on Vine Street. But it also was just kind of a coincidence that they lived at 1600 vine, which was at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. There were some people who were not there. Logan Paul wasn't there. Jake Paul was there.

[Rich Arnold]

Okay.

[Karen]

King Bash was not there. King Bach has always kind of kept himself out of the gossip, out of anything that could be construed as controversial. You know, he's just one of those like, I'm a nice guy and I want to surround myself with nice things sort of a personality. So he wasn't going to participate, but wanted to benefit from whatever it was they negotiated.

[Benedict Townsend]

The fact that the 1600 group have succeeded in getting vine management to come meet with them on their own turf is no small achievement when you consider that they're just a bunch of self made creators now dealing with a tech giant. The shiny conference room already makes it clear they want to be taken seriously as professionals, as grown ups. Karen was leading the group on behalf of vine and of course, Twitter, who were ultimately the ones in control and perhaps more importantly, the ones who controlled the purse strings. It had already been made very clear to Karen that there were hard financial limits on any initiatives she wanted to bring in.

[Karen]

Twitter had said, here's your budget. You can do all kinds of things with Viners to encourage them to create vines, but you can never pay them directly for content. Because Twitter was worried that if we worked out any kind of deal to pay Viners to make vines, that then they would also ask for the same deal to tweet. They didn't really understand that creators were always going to use Twitter as a marketing vehicle and that they were very unlikely to ask for money in order to tweet. But it was a different thing. And I mean, we've seen now my favorite statement is vine walked so TikTok could run. So we've seen now that TikTok, of course, you know, in early days had to pay a lot of creators to make content.

[Benedict Townsend]

By this point, Karen has been in her role for just a few months, but she's become very familiar with the many frustrations creators have.

[Karen]

We just listened for quite some time to all of them talk about how unheard and unseen they had felt, which we all truly resonated with and Understood, you know, and I was quite committed to like making Vine a better place for them. At the same time, there was always a voice in all of our heads saying like, okay, we get it. You don't feel like truly supported by a platform, but at the same time, you guys all are making way more money than any of us are. You know, like you, you have used vine as the platform by which you got famous and, and made a lot of income. So yeah, we get it. You feel sort of like emotionally scarred that you weren't being supported from the inside, but still, like, let's not negate the fact that you're quite successful because of this platform. We didn't say that in the room. Obviously we didn't want to come across as combative, but we gave them a lot of opportunity to voice all of their distress and we told them that we understood and that, you know, we are not the people responsible for that distress. We are the new people and we're really excited to create new things with them.

[Benedict Townsend]

Unfortunately, the 1600 group was not interested in conversations about new creative opportunities. Airing their grievances may have had some therapeutic value, but first and foremost, their eyes were set on the financial prize. Something which unknown to the vine team and had actually been in the works for months.

[Brendan McNerney]

Yeah, I knew that it was going to happen. I had heard rumblings of what the amounts, what the figures were.

[Benedict Townsend]

That's Brendan McNerney again, you know, the mid level creator who had ins with 1600 vine. He'd segued into producing more experimental content, but still took a keen entrepreneurial interest in the evolution of vine and was well connected in techy circles with a unique insight into both sides of the equation. Brendan could see the writing on the wall early on.

[Brendan McNerney]

At the time I thought it was ridiculous. Not from like a worth perspective, because I thought that the net worth and the sheer amount of views and metrics that you could to deliver a brand. From a marketing perspective, that number was warranted. But I also understood how unprofitable and like, how big of a debt vine collected as a company in an operation.

[Benedict Townsend]

Brendan and other creators were interested in pushing vine to make changes that would help with monetization. But they were considering different schemes which to them seemed much more realistic.

[Brendan McNerney]

There's got to be a middle ground of like, you know, there's no creator funds in that day. And I still don't think creator funds are necessarily a good idea. I don't think they're equitable. But that should have been day one of creator fund which is like, what if we paid everybody a small salary of $35,000 a year to create Vines? And then you get bonus incentives for working with our brand partners. Bonus incentives for talking about vine on Instagram. Like, there was frameworks that I think we were even talking about as creators.

[Benedict Townsend]

But while Brendan and others were still discussing potential monetization strategies, the 1600 group were going for gold.

[Brendan McNerney]

And they, they, of course, they went to the table with like, you know, give us the. Give us the yacht.

[Karen]

And. And then the. The tone changed and it started to get kind of aggressive and ugly in the room. And there was some talk about how they all knew that if they ganged up and all decided to stop posting on vine, like, immediately, that the whole app would cease to exist. They knew that basically they wielded all of the power and all of the eyeballs and all of the audience and that they could redirect that audience to Instagram and put us out of business quickly. And Marcus is quite smart. You know, he's. He. He was definitely in over his head. He cited a couple of things he had Googled, sort of like Twitter's revenue, and he was throwing around statistics, talking about how essentially we could afford to pay them directly.

[Benedict Townsend]

It's exactly what Karen has been trying.

[Karen]

To avoid, you know, so it's not ideal when you're in this new job and you've just had this party that you thought was a success the night before, and you're excited. And like, we were planning all these trips and all of these fun things to do, because my mandate was from Twitter. Here's a pretty large budget. You can plan whatever you want to do with that budget to engage creators and make them post more Vines. Because that was really the remit, right? Was like, let's get Viners to make more Vines instead. What was happening right then was a lot of the Viners were just posting Vines that said, follow me on Instagram. All my videos are now going to be on Instagram. They were just redirecting to Instagram because they were seeing so much growth with Instagram and they were seeing a decline in their numbers on Vine. And if they weren't getting the numbers that they wanted to on vine, then they couldn't command the same brand partnership prices. So I get it. It was all a fallout from a need to continue to command high brand deals. But my job was to try and get them to make Vines on Vine, and not Vines or videos that they were then going to share on every other platform, but make a Vine using the vine editing tools.

[Benedict Townsend]

I need you to take in the insanity of this scene. A group of barely 20 something Internet goofballs. Disney Channel star Jake Pa is accused of making life miserable for his neighbors in fancy West Hollywood. Pranksters who we've seen tase each other, make fart jokes, strip down in shopping malls, jump into strangers trolleys, scream profanities, eat spaghetti with a drill, perk their pecs to the beat of a pop song. We've done a lot of dumb things. This is the dumbest thing we've ever done. Those guys were holding one of Twitter's biggest products for ransom, listing off their demands and threatening to pull the trigger if they aren't met. The 1600 group understood the power they held and the headaches they could cause. But in other ways, lacking any real industry knowledge, they seem to seriously misjudge the reality of the situation.

[Karen]

One of the things they really pointed to was the current YouTube marketing campaign that was out in the world. YouTube had picked like maybe eight of their biggest YouTube stars and they had subway wraps in New York with the creator's faces on them. They had huge billboards in Times Square and they wanted that kind of, of marketing push behind them and their creator personalities. They wanted us to help them become even more famous than they were. And you know, again, they just didn't understand that there was not at all a financial landscape to make any of that happen or like a desire from anybody on the inside to make that happen.

[Benedict Townsend]

They don't know about Karen's three tier rescue plan. To her, they are not the long term future of the platform. And but she still doesn't want them to kick up a fuss and frighten off users. They are the Viv's, the very important Viners, the bullet that can't be removed. Yet she wants to keep them around just long enough that her cherished Ivy Leaguers and sprouts can grow big enough to knock them off their platform. It was, if I can take some dramatic license, like a polite slow motion coup.

[Karen]

But the thought that we were never going to be allowed to pay creators was obviously a huge obstacle and one that we were facing in that meeting because the conversation started to turn towards, okay, now we've told you everything that we're mad at you guys about. Now let's talk about how much money you're going to pay us. So Marcus said in the meeting, listen, we've figured out what we want from you guys. So we're going to post three vines a week for the next year and for that we want a million dollars.

[Benedict Townsend]

One million dollars. I mean, in the real world, well, in my world anyway, that's a lot of money, but in the world of big tech, it's barely a drop in the ocean. What's a million buc Twitter, Was that all it was going to take? In a way, was this kind of a bargain, a one off lump sum to stop all your creators complaining, to set your house? In order to buy Karen the time she needs to shepherd vine into a new era.

[Karen]

My thought, and the thought of my co workers who were at that meeting with me was like, this is great. If they're all agreeing to post regularly for a year, then in that year we can get this strategy off the ground and we'll have a ton of content ready to go. This is the time that we need. And so we left that meeting quite excited because we felt like a million dollars. You know, of course we were going to have to convince Twitter that it was going to be okay to pay creators for content, but we felt really positive, like, guys, we can do this. It's a million bucks. We'll go ask for it. And they had made us sign an NDA when we went into the meeting, which was hilarious because it was like, immediately broken by all of them. But also, you know, how could I really sign an NDA and then go back and talk to a bunch of people at Twitter about the need for this money? The whole thing, you know, that is where, like, Marcus was smart, he was strategic, he was intelligent, but he was also just a kid and he was trying to act as like a grown up professional. And I gave him all the credit in the world because he did a good job, but he just was like, missing a few key elements. So, you know, we had to kind of disregard that NDA as well. And we went back to Twitter and we started strategizing about how to set up this meeting with Twitter leadership and kind of really, for the first time ever, like, lay out the whole landscape, explain everything that was going on with vine, and plead to them for this release of a million dollars to pay these Viners to make Vines.

[Benedict Townsend]

Karen and the team flew out of LA flustered but triumphant, with a deal that would be an easy sell to the big bosses. The end. I'm just joking. Imagine. Imagine if that was the end of the story. Just picture me closing the COVID of a big, dusty storybook. The end. Oh, no. But of course, it was all too good to be true. You see, there was just one tiny detail that hadn't quite been communicated Properly. Was anything written down? Obviously, there's an NDA, but did they present you with, like, a little charter of requests or anything?

[Karen]

Well, they followed up with that via email. The next week, Marcus emailed over the proposal, and what he had not said in the room was that the ask was for a million dollars each.

[Kenny Knox]

Each.

[Benedict Townsend]

It wasn't $1 million. It was $1 million each. One small word that made all the difference.

[Karen]

They literally said, we will all make three Vines a week for a million dollars. And they just didn't say that word each in the room. They. So I was thinking, oh, a million bucks. I could do this. We could swing this. We thought, of course we're stupid, but we thought that the ask was for a million dollars for all of them. They each wanted a million dollars for the year. So that was like a 18, $19 million ask. And I got on the phone with him and said, like, buddy, I don't think you understand. Like, vine has never made a penny, so there is no way I could ever get $19 million unlocked for you guys. There's no way in hell. And he was like, I know how much Twitter makes. And I was like, yeah, but this isn't Twitter. This is Vine. We're nascent. We have never monetized. I don't think you really understand what it is that you're asking. And. And then as we were talking, you know, Gabby Gabbie, Hannah texted me and said, lele Pons told me what's going on. And even though I'm not a 1600 Viner, if I don't get a million dollars, I'm also not going to post. And so Lele had gone and told a whole bunch of people, you know, how excited she was that she was about to get vine to pay her. And then the ripple effect just began, and I started getting text after text from all kinds of creators saying, you have to make the same deal with us. So then we just knew there was no way this was ever going to happen.

[Benedict Townsend]

So much for that NDA. Once other creators started hearing about vine potentially paying a million dollars for content, it became a free for all, setting a precedent Twitter had hardline avoided for years. There was no way they'd agree to a payout now that the word had got out. If there had been a chance for a turnaround, there definitely wasn't one anymore.

[Karen]

So we told Marcus that it wasn't going to happen. All of those 1600 Viners started just immediately making Vines, saying, we're leaving Vine. Follow us on Instagram. You know all of our content is.

[Benedict Townsend]

There, so no deal. And true to their word, the 1600 Viners headed straight for the door. But they weren't bluffing this time. They were gone. For Rich Arnold, head of design, it felt like vine was finally reaping what they had sown.

[Rich Arnold]

I remember my reaction to hearing at the time was like, my brother, we don't make no money. Like where are we going to get a million dollars for you from? Like, we don't sell ads. But you know, it's a symptom of you created this culture where you empowered a hundred people to be the lifeline to the entire product. And then like when those people decide to use their leverage, you're in deep shit. That's. Sorry, like that's, that's your problem. Like you, you hitched this entire thing on, you know, 20, 21 year olds who at any point could just decide like, actually like we're not getting paid for this, we can go anywhere else and like their audience will come. And they were right.

[Benedict Townsend]

You know, I think it would be easy at this point to be like, oh Boohoo, these rich 20 year olds didn't get their, their million dollars or whatever, but everyone has a different perspective on it. But when you look in subsequent years, how much money platforms like YouTube or now TikTok are more than happy to pay creators, obviously those are platforms that are much more successfully monetized with ads, which is one of vine's various failings. MrBeast or any of these huge creators make a lot of money and platforms are willing to give them money because they value what they create. Is it that crazy what they were asking for?

[Mary Goodheart]

I mean this is the thing is that kind of the sticking point was vine didn't have the resources available. But the question of whether what they were producing had the value that they were assigning to it is a different question. And yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but actually, I mean, according to Brendan, maybe they were kind of spot on with their calculations.

[Brendan McNerney]

I mean like just using like a CPN calculator right now.

[Benedict Townsend]

Cpm, if you've forgotten, is how much money brands would be willing to pay a creator based on how well their videos perform.

[Brendan McNerney]

Yeah, like somebody that's driving you maybe half a million views on a singular video. That's a twelve and a half thousand dollar video. And you're looking at creators that are generating 12,5k in potential impressions per video. They're uploading it three times a week. They're doing that for four weeks during the year. You're already looking at about $150,000 a month in like just a standard CPM on impressions. That run rate's over a million dollars a year. Like, that's like one and a half million dollars. And they're asking for a million dollars for their existence on the platform. So to not think that from a Vine perspective, you can squeeze that out of them. If you can squeeze profitability out of paying them a million dollars is like, just at the time, if the industry wasn't there, I just don't think the foresight was there to say, yeah, these people are worth a million dollars. I think the audiences were well worth a million dollars and they just didn't, they just didn't click that. I just, I don't think they have that perspective.

[Benedict Townsend]

I cannot emphasize enough how consequential this was in so many ways. It would have been one thing if the 1600 vine negotiations had just quietly failed. But word getting out that they'd happened in the first place arguably was even more detrimental. The creator relationships that Karen had been carefully nurturing for months were destroyed in a matter of days.

[Brendan McNerney]

The true conversation that was happening was like, everybody sub that tier was fucking pissed. We were like, why them? Like, they don't push the bounds creatively at least at that point. That wasn't their M.O. it was, you know, videos that are still memed today. But like, it was stuff that, you know, we're like, oh, really? Like, that's your idea. Like the idea that some other smaller binder had six months ago with like a slightly different twist. I think everybody was just pissed. We were like, you know, the immediate aftermath was like the fact that that meeting didn't took place. It just felt like this weird succession style summit. Like, you know, it's like the evil geniuses getting together and like, you know, controlling as Illuminati. It just felt weird. And we were just kind of like, yeah, this is the ecosystem that we live in where, you know, everybody else who's like getting together and throwing vine parties and my entire group of friends in LA at one point was like 25 people deep. Everybody was a Viner. And like, it was just like that. Like, okay, this is the community you're ignoring versus those people who like talk shit on each other left and right and have beef in the comment sections, like, come on. So, yeah, it was. I think it was just disappointment and frustration from a lot of people after that meeting took place.

[Benedict Townsend]

Most of the creators I've spoken to from around that time say that even if they respected the Sheer savviness of the 1600 group in monopolizing the platform. Their overwhelming presence was still damaging to the Viniverse and to vine content overall. Here's Madon Matthews.

[Madon Matthews]

Although I knew and I'd met up with a lot of those Viners, that wasn't my. You know, we called ourselves, like, the indie group. Even though we weren't indie. Like, we still all had millions of followers. We weren't quite at the tens of twenties of millions of followers. And so we were continuing. My group was continuing to make content and enjoy the app and have fun, but we weren't aware that these conversations were happening. And so it would have been nice to kind of know about it so that I could take my 3 million followers and be like, hey, follow me on YouTube and Instagram and like, let's keep this thing going. It was kind of abrupt and. And weird and, like, why are they doing this? This seems a bit entitled. I remember thinking, sure, yeah, I guess we should be getting paid. But also, remember, before this app existed, you weren't doing anything, so, like, where's the gratitude? Of course we should be compensated for our efforts. You know, if we weren't creating, then people wouldn't care about the app, and the app would have not really done well. I always see both sides. I'm a Libra, so I'm. I see both sides. Like, I'm just grateful that this app exists, so I'm gonna give it what it's given me. And so to think that, you know, 20 people were like, we want this amount of money, and if we're not paying this, then we are leaving. It's like, could you have demanded less money maybe? I don't know, like, can you ask for, like, a hundred grand each? Like, why are you all each asking for a million dollars? Like, calm down. Half of those people didn't realize what they were doing. They're not on vine anymore, and they're not making any money. So, like, I don't even think that all 20 of those people were thinking, oh, what could happen if this app goes away? I think they were just like, their ego got so inflated, and then they just assumed that they'd be taken care of with these other apps, and they lost so many followers, and they're not as successful as they were on Vine.

[Rainer]

There's definitely an ecosystem. Everyone needs everybody and everything to keep that app running.

[Benedict Townsend]

Jas, meet Rainer. He's the creator we met back in episode four. Who found success often from taking the piss out of popular vine trends.

[Rainer]

When the popular people, I guess, pulled back and jumped ship. When I'm making those parody vines or I'm making fun of trends, that's not really there anymore because those guys are gone. So then you're making other vines or whatever. So it's like, there's definitely an ecosystem. And so the vine started diminishing and started being less of what it was.

[Benedict Townsend]

And that deterioration was very real. Brandon Cavillo, one of Vine's very first creators, had built a serious following for his comedy skits long before Clique's collaborations and revine for re vine became the norm. He'd seen vine through every era, and he remembers when it was clear that the end was nigh.

[Brandon Cavillo]

I would go to the popular page and I would see the. The biggest videos of the day. Only get like 5,000 likes in, like, three hours, which is a lot of people. But when you compare it to the peak of Vine, I'd say this is like, 2014, 2015, the number one on the popular page. We get like a hundred thousand likes in, like an hour.

[Rich Arnold]

It was crazy.

[Brandon Cavillo]

So when you see that, you go, oh, this thing's on the way out. You prepare for it. I prepared for it. I think I just kind of knew. I was like, this is not going to last long. It's very fun, but it's like college, you know, doesn't last. You make experiences there and you cherish those, but then you move on. You get a job somewhere else, you know, at a firm.

[Benedict Townsend]

Kenny Knox, part of the newer generation of creators, was a big beneficiary of Karen's schemes. When did you first get a sense of, like, Vines kind of on the way out.

[Kenny Knox]

Oh, well, my page was more active at like, 500, 600K than when I had, like, 1.4 or 5 million followers. I was like, what's going on here? I literally had the last viral video on Vine.

[Rich Arnold]

Wow.

[Kenny Knox]

And you want to know how many likes it peaked at?

[Benedict Townsend]

What was it?

[Kenny Knox]

It peaked at 81,000 likes. That's how much activity was lost on Vine. And I literally had to dig in the back of my brain and go to the back of my neck to try to go viral on Vine. But we all had to post to keep the app alive. Everybody damn near left. I was one of the last people who stayed. So it was only me and Thomas Sanders going head to head on the comedy page literally every single day, because I was literally fighting provides life at the end of his life. Everybody left. I stayed. I'm like, no, bro, I'm staying Karen, I got you. I ain't going nowhere because you can tell. It was kind of getting to her a little bit that people were quitting and she showed so much love and putting money in people's pockets. And she's like, why are you promoting Instagram on here? Like, I've already featured you on the app. And knock it till it was starting to stress her out a little bit.

[Benedict Townsend]

Bit of an understatement. Karen was gonna fight to the bitter end. Vine was still breathing. Even after the failed meeting and the mass walkout. It wasn't dead yet. Spark of creativity had rapidly made it one of the most downloaded apps in the world when it started. Why couldn't it happen again? Back in New York, Karen cut her losses and was turbocharging the two remaining tiers, going full throttle on the new generation of creators who'd stuck by the app.

[Karen]

We had to really accelerate the Ivy League plan. We took them to Japan, we took them to England, we took them on all these content creation trips. We took them to the White House. We made Vines with Michelle Obama, which was truly an amazing event. King Bach was actually with us for that and he got Justin Bieber to give him an unreleased track. So, you know, there were little sparks and high points after that meeting that made us feel like we were still going to survive and we were still going to make it.

[Benedict Townsend]

Interestingly, a lot of the sprout creators that Karen and her team had identified as major talents are the same people who have gone on to be the most famous post Vine.

[Karen]

Our sort of last hurrah. It was when we were desperately trying to do anything to compete with other platforms and stay alive. And we made this series called Camp Unplug. That when you look back on it, most of the cast of that long form series is quite famous now and doing very well for themselves.

[Benedict Townsend]

I watched it at the time, but I was watching it now and I was like, oh, it's Cody Ko. Everyone's in this. It's crazy.

[Karen]

Yeah, so those, I mean, I will say, like, big Pat's on the back for myself and the content team because we had identified like, these are all the next generation of successful creators. We just didn't have that, like, really. I think we needed about six months for that tipping point to occur, for them to be dominating the app and we just didn't have that time.

[Benedict Townsend]

March 2016, as the first buds of spring begin to emerge in Central park, power is shifting at vine hq.

[Karen]

Little did we know we had also just been given a new general manager, someone external who came in. And I think the story goes that, like, from the second she was hired, she was told, you know, like, hey, we're gonna shut this app down and we're bringing you on to, like, shut it down as gracefully as possible or something. But we saw her as a huge enemy, and, you know, everything was just literally falling apart around us.

[Benedict Townsend]

Rich Arnold recalls Team vine being taken out for an away day with the new general manager, Jason Topp.

[Rich Arnold]

The GM left. We had an interim GM for a moment, and then we brought in the last person who was gm, this woman named Hannah. And I remember we did this off site. And part of it was some stupid exercise where it was like, you write down your fears about the product, and then, you know, we're going to put them up on the wall and then, like, you know, let him go, whatever. I don't think I even did it, honestly. But a friend of mine, which he wrote, was like, it's too late. Like, you blew it. Basically, that's what happens.

[Benedict Townsend]

That's the most Silicon Valley thing I've ever heard of. Like, everyone write down your feet.

[Rich Arnold]

It's interesting because I don't. I don't think she was from, like, Silicon Valley. I think she was, like, from New York. But it was like, that's the thing that we don't do here. You know, I make. Even today, culturally, there's, like, a very big difference between, like, New York tech and, like, California tech. And like, this. This is one of those things that I would categorize as California bullshit.

[Benedict Townsend]

Yeah, that is. That's wild. Do you remember exactly when you found out that they were shutting vine down? Like, do you remember where you were, how you found out?

[Rich Arnold]

Oh, big time. This. I still have the email because it was so insane. So I knew something was happening. I assumed that they were going to do layoffs. Actually, I didn't assume they were going to shut it down. I assumed that there was going to be a pretty big layoff, and then maybe they would, like, fold it into Twitter or something like that. And it was to the degree that, like, I was pretty confident was going to happen. I was already, like, I was planning to leave. I was, like, ready. I was already, like, halfway out the door. And as funny like, literally the night before they did layoffs, I was looking to find the gm because I was going to tell her, like, you know, if we could just be above board for a minute, I'm not sticking around. So if there's layoffs, you know, one of the other guys on the team, like, he wants to stay. You should keep him and you should let me go because I'm not sticking around. But I couldn't find her. And so then the next morning, we had an email. It was like, Hannah used to do these, like, you know, like, this is very common. Like, GMs are. Has a company do, like their weekly, like, top of mind thing, whatever. And her thing was called the Tiger Times. Something about, like, her. It was like part of her brand, like calling herself, like, the Tiger or something like that. I don't really remember why, but it was like, hey, dudes, like, got a really important meeting tomorrow morning, so it'd be like super, like, cool if you guys could jump. It could be like in the office tomorrow. And when I saw that, I knew that meant like, okay, like, we're all like, this shit is going down. But it was like such a bizarre, this weirdly excited way to be, like, hey, gang, you're all about to get shit canned. And so then we showed up to the office the next morning. She did some announcement that they were basically shutting down the app and that a handful of people would be asked to stick around for three months to sunset it, basically. And then we all did one on one conversations with her and HR or whatever.

[Benedict Townsend]

And then, man, that email you described is absolutely insane. I want to take a pause for a moment because, Mary, apparently you have got hold of this email.

[Mary Goodheart]

Yeah, yeah, Rich has sent it. It is as he remembers. And we've checked with another employee because we want to be sure, and they agree that this is what they sent.

[Benedict Townsend]

It's been verified as real and I've.

[Mary Goodheart]

Sent it to you now. I mean, I've got to say, it's. It's a little bit of comic likeness in the darkness of the end of Vine. But let's just bear in mind context, you are a major organization, sort of worst situation a company can be in, where you realize you. You are no longer surviving. And that means that all these people who depend on you for their livelihood, and this is you inviting them to the meeting where you are very sadly going to tell them that despite all of your best efforts, you can no longer employ them. And I'm sending it to you now.

[Benedict Townsend]

Because, yes, you've been keeping this from me strategically so I could read it live.

[Mary Goodheart]

It's. It is quite remarkable.

[Benedict Townsend]

Okay, this is genuinely my first time seeing this email. I'm going to read it out. Okay. Today's headline, Team Huddle Tomorrow feels pretty light so far. Hey, dudes, we're going to do a midweek huddle tomorrow at 11am it doesn't even say meeting, it's just huddle.

[Mary Goodheart]

Oh, yeah.

[Benedict Townsend]

If you're remote or ooo, which I guess is out of office. Would be rad. Rad, yeah.

[Mary Goodheart]

That's the bit that gets me.

[Benedict Townsend]

It would be rad if you could VC in. And I'm guessing VC is video call or video chat. Why they didn't. They couldn't type out. Out of office. Brackets. If you don't have access to hangouts, hit me back. Hit me back. And I can dial you in because Jihang is the best. Like that. Thanks. Thanks. With a full stop as well. Oh, yeah, thanks.

[Mary Goodheart]

The most solemn moment of the entire message is the full stop after thanks.

[Benedict Townsend]

It's not, by the way, this is mandatory attendance because you need to find out we're letting you all go. It's. If you're working remotely. It'd be rad if you could call in because if you don't, if you don't call in, it'll be less rad for you because you won't find out that you have lost your job. It's very casual, isn't it? I just think when you receive this email, you could be easily forgiven for not realizing.

[Mary Goodheart]

Yeah.

[Benedict Townsend]

That you're being summoned to the end.

[Mary Goodheart]

Yeah, I would think that I can miss that.

[Benedict Townsend]

Slightly tone deaf. I would say most charitably, I did.

[Mary Goodheart]

Reach out to her. She did reply. She was the GM at the time. She said, sorry, I'm not doing these types of requests, which is fair enough.

[Benedict Townsend]

She had a pretty poison chalice. I'm not saying she's a bad person for doing this or anything like that.

[Mary Goodheart]

It's kind of beautiful in its inappropriateness. It's just cringy.

[Rich Arnold]

I thought it was more funny than anything. Like, this is just like, this is wild. I had already started talking to Instagram at this point, so I knew I was out. So I wasn't angry or anything. You know, the thing was already over. I should say, like, I do, like, actually kind of have some sympathy. I think she was put in a really difficult position. I don't think she did a particularly good job at the role, but I don't know if there's a good way to do it. We all left. We went to this bar around the corner. Like this, like, shitty Chelsea, New York bar. It was like, not a cool place. We went there probably at like 11 in the morning, you know, noon maybe or something like that. And it was just two or three, like, regulars and Then all of a sudden, you know, like 40 people walk in and we're all like hanging out, getting drinks and stuff. And there's like a TV on and then on. While we're there Hanging out, the TV announces.

[Benedict Townsend]

Twitter shutting the 6 second video.

[Rich Arnold]

Service today that like, like the news is on and they're like, oh, Twitter shutting down fine. And of course like the bar is like, what?

[Benedict Townsend]

You know, this is us.

[Rich Arnold]

You know, but it's like the super like surreal moment of like, I'm sure the people who were there were like, oh, I, I guess this is them. You know, they're like, yeah, yeah, Twitter.

[Rainer]

And you'll post it directly to Twitter.

[Benedict Townsend]

Do you remember the day when they, they turned it off? You know how.

[Karen]

Yeah, absolutely. I was on vacation. I was in Albuquerque at my in laws house and my boss said to me, I know you're on vacation, but this meeting is mandatory. So there was like three hours of my father in law figuring out what the wifi password was for me to join the meeting. And then the, I think it was the general manager at the time, Hannah, who said, you know, so we're going to close. And effective today, most of you will go home and be given a severance, but some of you will receive an email. And for those of you who do, you're not going to. This won't be your last day. You've been chosen to be part of the shutdown team. So I was one of those lucky people. So I went out and got really drunk in Albuquerque and then kind of dealt with the fact that while many of my co workers had a three month severance that they got to sit at home and enjoy and look for jobs. I was one of the, I think Maybe there were 12 of us given the task of closing the company. So for the next three months, I worked out my severance by packaging up all of the vine merch that my coworker Jeremy and I had created, which was a huge success by the way. Still to this day, vine merch is a very valuable item on the Internet. And I just, I packed up everything that was left and sent it out to all of the creators who were reaching out and asking for it and you know, wrote a lot of teary letters and tried to be the supportive cheerleading mom that I always had been.

[Benedict Townsend]

Karen, Vine's chief optimism officer, had lost her battle. Her vision for the app, courting creators, curating content first was too far ahead of its time.

[Karen]

I, I think vine could have survived with the support of Twitter if Twitter had any fluency around vine, then they could have brought their own ideas to the table and really participated in a conversation about what the future roadmap looked like. It just comes down to timing and leadership and the support from Twitter as well. You know, like if, if every decision maker at Twitter was a regular vine user, then I think we would have had a lot more internal support. But the story goes that Jack Dorsey was friends with the founders and then when the whole thing fell apart, you know, he kind of lost heart for it. If anybody with any kind of foresight had just said, wait, maybe the problem here is that there's a bunch of people there with very little experience trying to figure things out with no mandate or no roadmap. So, like, let's just put a couple of quite experienced people on this and let's give them one more year to turn it around. Because I really think if we had had good leadership and we had had one more year, we could now be TikTok and Congress wouldn't be worried about the fact that our social media success is governed by China. Now. I want to say we had a million daily active users when we closed, which, I mean, hey, a ton of apps would kill for that kind of traffic, right? But it seemed clear to Jack and the other Twitter leadership that the peak had come and gone and we were no longer growing. We were deter. And like, rather than just get to embarrassingly low levels, let's just kill it while it's still kicking.

[Benedict Townsend]

What's up, Internet? My name is Logan Paul and I am reporting live from Vine Street. Today we are going around asking some.

[Karen]

Of Vine's biggest creators how they feel.

[Benedict Townsend]

About their platform being killed off like a chicken at McDonald's. Let's go. And just like that, vine was dead. Not with a bang, but with an email. There we go. Vine's dead.

[Mary Goodheart]

That's it.

[Benedict Townsend]

Vine's done. You know what's not done? This story. We've got some more to dig into, Mary, and a few more people we need to talk to. Does it feel anticlimactic in a way, without being too cheesy? Vine dying is almost the beginning of the story. All the way back in episode one, I promised that if you want to understand TikTok and the tech world of today, you need to understand and the story of Vine.

[Mary Goodheart]

You did promise that?

[Benedict Townsend]

I did promise that. And I like to keep my promises. And this is the point in this upcoming final episode, this is the point where we will make that connection between how this little six second app got us to the world that we're in now. On the final episode, the autopsy, the funeral, and the lasting legacy of Vine.

[Karen]

It was this changing of the guard moment on the Internet. They experienced so much hate. You let vine die in front of you.

[Rich Arnold]

I was like, still tight with a couple of the guys who were some of the backend engineers there. And so I messaged them and I was like, is it possible I could squeeze in one last vine before he shut down?

[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 Six 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 Jaynes. Sophie Snelling is the Executive producer, Al Riddell is head of Factual Podcasts and Vicki Etchels is Director of Podcast at Global this is a Global Player original Podcast.