Twitter to shut down Vine this month

Twitter has confirmed that it will shut down its short-form video sharing service Vine on January 17 and relaunch it as a camera app.

The timing was confirmed in a Tweet posted by Vine, which said the Vine app will become Vine Camera – an app that will allow users to make 6.5 second looping videos and post them to Twitter.

The move will allow users to still capture and post short clips, but will shut Vine as a destination in its own right for accessing that media.

From this month, the existing Vine website will become an archive of Vines that were created through the Vine app, which web users will still be able to browse.

Twitter first announced it would shut down Vine in October, at the same time as it said it would cut 9% of the company’s total staff in a cost-cutting move.