7. The Battle of Vine Street
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What meeting changed the fate of Vine?
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.
Um, so I went over with a couple of other people from Vine the next day to have this meeting with them. And, um, 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.
Hey, what's up, man? How you doing? How's it going? 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.
I just wanted to say that being a daddy is the best thing that anyone can have happen to them.
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.
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.
You're in this sort of conference room, right? That's within the Vine Street complex, as you said.
Who are the key players at 1600 Vine?
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. King Batch was not there. King Batch has always kind of kept himself out of the gossip, out of anything. They 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 but wanted to benefit from whatever it was they negotiated.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What meeting changed the fate of Vine?
0:24–3:06
2
Who are the key players at 1600 Vine?
3:06–10:23
3
What demands did the creators make?
10:23
4
How did the Vine team respond to creator grievances?
10:23–17:17
5
Why did the creators threaten to leave Vine?
17:17–20:32
6
What was the financial offer discussed?
20:32–23:39
7
What was the misunderstanding about the million-dollar request?
23:39–30:32
8
How did the fallout affect Vine's community?
30:32–41:33