Why Vine died

Could MySpace have been saved? Percival talked about what the company might have done differently, and admitted that by the time he arrived in 2009, it was possibly unsaveable – not least because by that time, it was difficult to hire the most talented engineers against competition from Facebook, Google and other rising tech companies.

In the heady days of the millennial media startup boom of the 2010s, the sense that large social platforms would pay publishers for content and create a new class of lucrative digital media outlets was pervasive and unquestioned. And in those early years, no one knew which platforms would succeed. It is almost impossible to believe, but there was a... See more

Some saw it as a dire turn for the wider internet, which had begun to put growth above the concerns of everyday people. (Facebook would later become a case in point.) “That’s the fate of all social media,” said Julie Mora-Blanco, an early YouTube moderator who went to work for Twitter. “You start with a small group, you cultivate a community, you g

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