Karen Spencer

So everybody there had their own little passion project and they were like developing, you know, how they could bring the skateboarding channel to more of an audience and how they could make the art channel pop off in a more popular way. And the thing is, 15 year olds just wanted like fart and dick jokes, you know, and that's what these like top Viners were giving them.

So everybody there had their own little passion project and they were like developing, you know, how they could bring the skateboarding channel to more of an audience and how they could make the art channel pop off in a more popular way. And the thing is, 15 year olds just wanted like fart and dick jokes, you know, and that's what these like top Viners were giving them.

People like King Batch, who was when I came on board, the top Viner with the most loops. And that's that was what we called views. He had never been able to talk to anyone at Vine before. He had sent just countless emails to the help center saying like, hey, I'm your biggest Viner and I'm having some technical issues. Can you help me? Can you provide me some support?

People like King Batch, who was when I came on board, the top Viner with the most loops. And that's that was what we called views. He had never been able to talk to anyone at Vine before. He had sent just countless emails to the help center saying like, hey, I'm your biggest Viner and I'm having some technical issues. Can you help me? Can you provide me some support?

So when I met him, he said, oh, I thought Vine just didn't like black people. And I said, no, no, Vine just didn't like creators in general at all.

So when I met him, he said, oh, I thought Vine just didn't like black people. And I said, no, no, Vine just didn't like creators in general at all.

Andre and maybe another leader from the company took me in a conference room and shut the door and said, we're in code red. And that's why you're here. And Instagram had just launched video. And because of that, we were seeing Vine's activity decrease in an alarming fashion day over day. In fact, when I joined, there was like a digital board on the wall of the office that said,

Andre and maybe another leader from the company took me in a conference room and shut the door and said, we're in code red. And that's why you're here. And Instagram had just launched video. And because of that, we were seeing Vine's activity decrease in an alarming fashion day over day. In fact, when I joined, there was like a digital board on the wall of the office that said,

displayed all of the daily statistics about how many people were on the app, like daily active users, monthly active users. That board, the cord was pulled on that board pretty soon after I started because no one wanted to be broadcasting the truth about what was happening with the app. So it was a big Code Red situation. It was a founderless company at that point.

displayed all of the daily statistics about how many people were on the app, like daily active users, monthly active users. That board, the cord was pulled on that board pretty soon after I started because no one wanted to be broadcasting the truth about what was happening with the app. So it was a big Code Red situation. It was a founderless company at that point.

There was a lot of sort of attempt at like power grabbing, you leader at every department was kind of making a play to be the general manager of the company. I think we had four different general managers while I was there. So there was no clear leadership and there was always a lot of internal turmoil. But what everybody knew to be the truth was that Vine had never monetized.

There was a lot of sort of attempt at like power grabbing, you leader at every department was kind of making a play to be the general manager of the company. I think we had four different general managers while I was there. So there was no clear leadership and there was always a lot of internal turmoil. But what everybody knew to be the truth was that Vine had never monetized.

Vine was an expensive app for Twitter to be carrying on their backs. You know, it was a huge monthly cost to support that much streaming video at the time. And Yet Twitter had never issued any kind of mandate about like, hey, guys, you have six months to get your shit together and figure out how you're going to make money or anything like that.

Vine was an expensive app for Twitter to be carrying on their backs. You know, it was a huge monthly cost to support that much streaming video at the time. And Yet Twitter had never issued any kind of mandate about like, hey, guys, you have six months to get your shit together and figure out how you're going to make money or anything like that.

And so it's very amalgamous in terms of what are we going to do to make money? How are we going to monetize this? Is there going to be ads? We talked about a tip jar, you know, all of the different ways that people now monetize on social platforms. There was daily conversation about what that plan was going to look like, but no clear decision on what was going to happen.

And so it's very amalgamous in terms of what are we going to do to make money? How are we going to monetize this? Is there going to be ads? We talked about a tip jar, you know, all of the different ways that people now monetize on social platforms. There was daily conversation about what that plan was going to look like, but no clear decision on what was going to happen.

And so we were just basically freeloading off of Twitter, you know, which could definitely have contributed to the fact that Twitter was hostile towards us. And we were at an impasse.

And so we were just basically freeloading off of Twitter, you know, which could definitely have contributed to the fact that Twitter was hostile towards us. And we were at an impasse.

It became really obvious as soon as I joined that Vine was essentially the redheaded stepchild of Twitter.

It became really obvious as soon as I joined that Vine was essentially the redheaded stepchild of Twitter.