The Vine app’s six seconds of fame have officially come to an end.

Nearly over four years after purchasing Vine, Twitter shut down the six-second video sharing app on Tuesday, replacing it with a new camera app.  

The new app, known as Vine Camera, still allows users to record video, however instead of uploading videos to Vine, they can be uploaded to Twitter or saved to their phone. The looping quality of Vine will remain intact, because now when a video less than 6.5 seconds long is uploaded to Twitter, it will automatically loop.  

The Vine website will exist as an archive for all the videos uploaded by users since its start in 2012. New videos, however, can no longer be uploaded to the site.  

“Vine had a hard job because the app market was already saturated,” said Jesse Fox, assistant professor of communication and expert on social media. “Multiple channels fill the same needs, but are easier to use. We want fast and immediate when we post online and Vine required users to have creativity and skill. You had to take the time to create something awesome before putting it online.” 

Twitter bought Vine in 2012 shortly before its official launch and Vine became the No. 1 app on the iTunes App Store six months later. At the beginning of this year, Vine was ranked No. 284, according to the social media data site, App Annie. Twitter is No. 19, Snapchat is No. 5 and Instagram is No. 2. 

Twitter first announced its plan to discontinue Vine in October. No official reason was provided, however, the announcement came just hours after Twitter stated it would lay off more than 300 workers in an effort to be profitable.  

Snapchat and Instagram allow you to do the same thing as Vine, but quicker and easier, Fox said.

“You have more freedom posting on Snapchat because if you post something stupid, it will be deleted,” she said.

What Vine had that others did not, however, was looping.

Zach Swartz, director of new and creative media for OSU football, used Vine regularly because of its loopable quality. 

“Posting a 6-second piece of content doesn’t really make sense if it doesn’t repeat, and that repetition incentivizes the viewer to watch over and over again,” Swartz said in an email. “There are a lot of moments we want to share in an engaging manner but don’t really need to do a full minute-long piece on.”

Swartz rarely filmed directly through the Vine app, however, and said“99-percent” of the content he uploaded to Vine was pre-produced in some form. Swartz predicts he and the football media team will use the Vine Camera feature prominently for Twitter.  

“We’ve been doing research among our student-athletes and it seems that Twitter is actually their preferred platform, at least from a recruiting perspective, with Instagram and Snapchat a close second,” Swartz said.

Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat continue to maintain their spots at the top of app store charts, but it might not stay that way, Fox said.

“It’s too soon for social media to turn into excessive virtual reality worlds, which is what everyone seems to think,” she said.  “I think a same-world type of social media will be next, where users will be able to create videos together when not actually physically together.”