Elon Musk announces he's bringing back beloved app that's been dead for eight years

Many of the biggest social media platforms have remained on top for over a decade now, but there was one particularly beloved app that tragically shut down over eight years ago that Elon Musk might be bringing back from the dead.

Elon Musk has promised a lot of things since he purchased Twitter, now X, for $44 billion back in 2022, and the platform looks very different to when Jack Dorsey was in charge and the blue bird was still flying around.

One of the most significant recent additions is Grok, Musk's own ChatGPT-like AI assistant, as users can either tag the bot as they would any user to get a post-based reply, or talk directly via a chatbot with some creepy optional features.

This, alongside xAI's purchase of X for a staggering amount of money, has allowed Musk to go all-in on artificial intelligence, and while that has had some notably harmful consequences, it could also see the return of a fan-favorite social media platform.

What social media app is Elon Musk bringing back?

As revealed in a new post on X from the billionaire, Elon Musk has announced that he's reviving long dead but much loved short form video app Vine, which was owned by Twitter before being shut down in 2016.

If you're a bit too young to have seen Vine in its prime, it was the the short form video king before TikTok took over that title, forcing users to stay within a six-second time limit for any videos that they uploaded.

This caused people to focus more on simple yet effective jokes and content that could easily be watched over and over, and it quickly became a social media sensation that many people turned to.

At its peak in December 2015 the app had over 200 million active users, but less than a year later Twitter - who purchased Vine for $30 million back in October 2012 - announced that it was disabling all uploads, before completely shutting it down on January 17, 2017.

It's understood that the biggest reason why Vine shut down was because it essentially made no money due to a lack of ads, which as a by-product caused creators to take their videos elsewhere.

While TikTok has definitely taken its place in the years following Vine's closure, many still long for the simplicity and accessibility of the platform, and perhaps this could be a way back for many.

What will Elon Musk's Vine look like?

It's unclear whether Musk is actually being serious in his desire to bring Vine back from the dead, but one thing that's clear if it were to happen is that AI would be at the front and center.

Presumably, this would allow people to create short videos using Grok, which they would then be able to share directly to a feed, although it remains very mysterious at this point in time.

Grok currently only offers image generation tools, as opposed to the video capacity of software like Sora or Google's Veo, but considering Musk's claim that the latest version of his AI is smarter than a PhD candidate, perhaps that could be the next step.

If that was to be the form that a revitalized Vine took, however, it would be a far cry from the people-focused nature of the original app, and many might not be as happy as you'd think to see the platform return.