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    Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

    358 points ofalkaed | 15 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 1.647s | source | bottom

    Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
    1. haunter ◴[11 Oct 25 23:06 UTC] No.45553492[source]▶
    Vine. It was already pretty big back in 2013 but Twitter had no idea what to do with it. TikTok actually launched just a few months before Vine was shut down and erased from the internet.
    replies(6): >>45553602 #>>45553691 #>>45555425 #>>45558654 #>>45561814 #>>45620075 #
    2. joshdavham ◴[11 Oct 25 23:19 UTC] No.45553602[source]▶
    I've thought about this too. Imagine all the drama the US government could've avoided if Vine had won over TikTok!
    replies(1): >>45554769 #
    3. geor9e ◴[11 Oct 25 23:31 UTC] No.45553691[source]▶
    I will never forgive twitter for this catch and kill of a platform so full of life
    replies(1): >>45554950 #
    4. lazyasciiart ◴[12 Oct 25 02:55 UTC] No.45554769[source]▶
    With Elon running it? He probably would have actively sold it to china.
    replies(1): >>45554815 #
    5. geoffpado ◴[12 Oct 25 03:04 UTC] No.45554815{3}[source]▶
    In a world where Vine is as successful as TikTok ended up being, who’s to say they get to a point where selling to Musk even happens?
    replies(1): >>45556950 #
    6. burnt-resistor ◴[12 Oct 25 03:28 UTC] No.45554950[source]▶
    Perhaps because they already had Periscope that no one used. It was a "buy competitor to kill it" play that didn't have the desired effect.
    replies(1): >>45555084 #
    7. tdeck ◴[12 Oct 25 03:57 UTC] No.45555084{3}[source]▶
    Amusingly Periscope was their clone of Meerkat which was briefly popular before they killed it.
    replies(1): >>45561250 #
    8. bapak ◴[12 Oct 25 05:10 UTC] No.45555425[source]▶
    Whoever took the decision to kill Vine was an absolute moron, even without hindsight. It was square videos, how hard could it have been to shove an ads banner above it and call it a day? Incredible
    replies(2): >>45555520 #>>45557321 #
    9. saurik ◴[12 Oct 25 05:30 UTC] No.45555520[source]▶
    They also killed Periscope right as the explosion of streaming online video happened... Twitter has always been pretty incompetent.
    10. quinndexter ◴[12 Oct 25 10:07 UTC] No.45556950{4}[source]▶
    guys when you invent fictional alternate realities, you're allowed to leave people out of them completely. Anyone you like.
    11. edent ◴[12 Oct 25 11:21 UTC] No.45557321[source]▶
    There's an excellent write up at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/28/extreme...
    replies(1): >>45558791 #
    12. ◴[12 Oct 25 14:57 UTC] No.45558654[source]▶
    13. bazmattaz ◴[12 Oct 25 15:16 UTC] No.45558791{3}[source]▶
    That is so fascinating. They completely ignored their most most valuable users and thus the users left and the site collapsed. Fascinating, the hubris of the leadership at twitter to think they knew better than their users
    14. heylook ◴[12 Oct 25 19:52 UTC] No.45561250{4}[source]▶
    Periscope was in closed beta when Meerkat launched. Neither was a clone of the other. Just two teams with the same idea at the same time.
    15. qingcharles ◴[17 Oct 25 18:20 UTC] No.45620075[source]▶
    Elon said they found the archived data and are going to relaunch it as an AI slop output for Grok, ala Sora 2 feed.