Twitter announces it's discontinuing Vine

Vine announced Thursday it will discontinue its mobile app known for looping six-second video clips that has launched memes and the careers of young social media stars since it came out in 2013.

In a blog post on Medium, Vine and its parent company, Twitter, announced that it will discontinue the app "in the coming months," but did not specify a date.

Users will still be able to keep and view their Vines. "To all the creators out there — thank you for taking a chance on this app back in the day," the post reads.

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The service enjoyed 200 million users in 2015. Some of its biggest superstars include Canadian-born Andrew "King Bach" Bachelor with more than 16 million followers, and Toronto-based singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes.

Vine videos arguably created its own genre of meme, thanks to the hypnotic nature of its six-second clips that loop by default. If you've heard phrases like "Damn, Daniel" and "Back at it again at Krispy Kreme," you have Vine to thank for that.

Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov has little positive to say about the shutdown, tweeting, "Don't sell your company!" shortly after the announcement. Yusupov, along with co-founders Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, sold Vine to Twitter in 2012 before its wide release. 

The online micro-video landscape has grown since Vine's launch, with Snapchat and Instagram Video growing as major competitors, especially among teenagers and millennial-aged smartphone owners.

Vine has been slowly shedding its top content creators in the last year, Business Insider says, as some of its biggest stars move to other social media accounts.

Others have made the jump to more traditional media, including Mendes, whose Vine stardom led to a music career, or Cameron Dallas, who earlier this year signed on for an upcoming Netflix reality show.

The news comes as Twitter announced it will cut nine per cent of its global workforce while also beefing up live video offerings on its main microblogging platform.

Fans eulogized Vine today by sharing their favourite micro-clips on Twitter.