Before there was TikTok, there was Vine. In 2012, Twitter purchased the prototype short-form video sharing platform for $30 million. Five years later, the app that launched a thousand memes was shut down.
Now, Elon Musk—who purchased and rebranded Twitter in 2022—has announced that the Vine video archive will be restored after staff at the company recovered it.
“We recently found the Vine video archive (thought it had been deleted) and are working on restoring user access,” Musk wrote on X, “so you can post them if you want.”
Grok Imagine is AI Vine!Btw, we recently found the Vine video archive (thought it had been deleted) and are working on restoring user access, so you can post them if you want.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 2, 2025
It’s not the first time the tech billionaire has teased the idea of reviving the six-second video-sharing app beloved by millennials and zoomers of a certain age.
Soon after buying Twitter, now X, Musk asked his followers whether Vine should be brought back, with the majority voting in favor. News reports at the time suggested engineers were working on it, but the plan failed to materialize. In 2024, he asked the same question, and again people responded with overwhelming support.
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2024
Whether Musk actually delivers on reviving Vine this time remains to be seen. However, comments on Musk’s post range from elated to skeptical, given its announced association with Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.
“Grok Imagine is AI Vine!” Musk wrote in the same post. The former DOGE chief is currently rolling out new artificial intelligence image creation software on X, allowing users to create AI video using Grok.
Musk’s announcement would seem to suggest that Vine will not be fully restored as a standalone app, but instead that the video archive will be accessible to users on X, allowing them to share existing videos rather than create and upload new ones.
At its peak, Vine had some 200 million users and was famous for its irreverent and entertaining slice-of-life clips. Unfortunately, alleged mismanagement and rising competition from less-restrictive platforms like TikTok hastened its demise.
Some of the platform’s biggest stars, including Jake and Logan Paul, migrated their content to YouTube, while others jumped ship to TikTok, and the service’s shutdown relegated it to the halls of millennial memory.
The post Millennials, Rejoice: Elon Musk Says He’s Bringing Vine Back appeared first on The Daily Beast.
