In 2012, Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupove launched Vine, a mobile application. Vine had the particularity of presenting itself in the form of a social network centered around short videos, maximum 6 seconds, running in a loop.
On one side, there were the creators of these videos, and on the other, the spectators, who could subscribe to their favorite videographers to follow their regularly posted content. Some successful Vine video creators have become very well known, such as Frenchman Jérôme Jarre (on the Wikipedia page).
The year it launched, Vine was bought by Twitter. But in 2016, the blue bird social network had no choice but to abandon the project, lacking a second wind and marred by various controversies. Thus, the 200 million active users at the time and the thousands of creators, the “Viners”, found themselves orphans.
However, since the beginning of 2018, they have been waiting for the new application from Dom Hofman, co-creator of Vine. Here it is finally available, for a few hours, on mobile.
Byte, much more than a copy of Vine?
Byte uses Vine's video format. But new creation possibilities are offered in the app. We sense inspirations taken here and there from the competition, such as TikTok, or even Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.
© Byte
In particular, it is possible to assemble photos and GIFs, but also to annotate your creations.
Byte obviously keeps some particularities, including its extremely short video format (6 seconds, compared to one minute for TikTok for example), while its creator announces new features coming soon, focused on the remuneration of content creators.
Competition will be tough on mobile, facing the growing success of TikTok and the ogre Facebook. Despite everything, Byte could well constitute one of the phenomenon apps of 2020.
Who among you has already tested Byte on iPhone or iPad?
Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.
