Twitter’s video-looping platform Vine is home to a barrage of top influencers and homegrown talent.
Like YouTube creators, those users have branched out to embrace other forms of media. Whether it be an appearance on a popular reality TV show or a Disney sitcom, Vine stars are increasingly being accepted by the mainstream like their YouTube counterparts.
Yet when it comes to their original content, Vine’s most popular users feel like they’re being shortchanged, and they’ve decided to take the matter to Twitter.
Late last year, a secret meeting was held between executives from Vine and Twitter, and the former’s aggrieved talent roster. The main agenda of the gathering was to discuss payment solutions for Vine creators, reports BuzzFeed.
With Twitter already locked in an internal battle to retain staff, it could also be facing an exodus on another important front. Additionally, it doesn’t help that the likes of YouTube and Facebook already have in place, or are pushing ahead with, monetization programs for creators and publishers respectively. An unnamed Vine user made it very clear that the service’s users realize there are other options available to them.
“Three and a half years is a long time to have us posting on your platform for free,” the Vine talent told BuzzFeed. “We’ve had a lot of our top creators find a lot of successes on YouTube, a lot of success on Facebook right now.”
Although Twitter already offers some revenue opportunities for video creators — including brand-related sponsorship and advertising schemes — it has yet to offer a direct revenue component for Vine, in the vein of YouTube’s monetization program. However, as a result of the meeting, the social network is considering doing just that.
“The creators just want to be treated fairly,” stated one top Vine user who sat in on the meeting. “Right now they are trying to figure this out.”
Like Twitter, Vine also boasts a major gulf between its top creators (the influencers at the top of the hierarchy that boast the most followers and highest engagement rates) and the rest of its 200 million user base. Lately, Twitter has devoted its efforts to attracting new users to its service, with mixed results. It cannot afford to do the same for Vine, at least not at the expense of the platform’s biggest stars.
