January 27, 2020
It’s official, Byte has launched!
What’s Byte? Well, remember Vine, the video-sharing app which specialised in a 6-second looping format? The one that Twitter bought and then shut down to cut costs because hosting video is costly? Thereby counting themselves out a tonne of cash which TikTok is now enjoying? Yes… Byte is essentially Vine 2.0, brought to us lucky people by the same founders.
Here’s the app search and categories
Some of us are excited by Byte. Personally, I’ve never got into TikTok since it launched, somehow preferring the limitations of 6-seconds which forces a certain kind of creativity – when you can do “anything”, there’s something about the output which makes it boring. Kinda like when you go to an industry awards ceremony and the brands with the endless budgets win everything. Every time. Isn’t something harder-won more satisfying? Just me?! OK.
Reviews of Byte so far are generally good, and creators seem happy to wait patiently for those all-important augmented reality effects and filters – right now you can’t even share a link to a posted video, or a profile, so users will need to work a bit harder to grow profiles. Stating in their release messaging that “nostalgia is our starting point, but where we go next is up to you” (they even launched on the same day in January – 24th – as the Vine launch), I think the app will have to move quickly to draw and keep creators and users who currently live on TikTok – some of whom might never have used Vine. In a smart move, though, they have launched with a community forum to encourage users to share their suggestions for improvement.
And talking of creators, and/or influencers depending on who they are – is there a way to make money yet? Vine was approached by a group of influencers with a proposition for monetization, but it fell on deaf ears and may have been the beginning of the end. Even TikTok creators aren’t finding it easy to create a steady stream of income from the platform in the same way as they can on YouTube, as the main option in-app to “tip” a creator by using coins.
As we go live with this blog, we don’t have any other timeline for a creator program except “soon”.
So, does the world really need another video sharing app? Wait and see – for this writer, though, I’m already enjoying the beauty of seamless looping videos… addiction pending!