The Story Behind OpenVine
In an era where AI can generate anything, filter everything, and perfect every frame, I found myself longing for something real. Something raw. Something that captured the pure, unfiltered joy of human creativity in six-second bursts.
🍇 Remember Vine?
Between 2013 and 2017, Vine wasn't just an app—it was a cultural phenomenon. Six seconds to make someone laugh, cry, or say "wait, play that again." No algorithms deciding what you should see. No AI-enhanced filters. Just pure, authentic human creativity looping endlessly.
Want to dive deep into Vine's incredible story? Check out the Vine history podcast for a fascinating look at how Vine changed social media forever.
đź’š Why Bring It Back?
I did this because I was recording interviews for my revolution.social podcast and Vine kept coming up. It was an era that was lost. Everyone had stories about their favorite Vines, creators they loved, moments that defined internet culture—all gone.
I wondered, how hard could it be today to build Vine? Turns out, not so hard. It's taken me about as much time to create OpenVine as it took us at Odeo to build the first launched version of Twitter.
But more importantly, we lost our digital rights. When Twitter shut down Vine in 2017, millions of creators lost years of work overnight. Their videos, their communities, their creative legacy—gone because one company made a business decision.
Never again should we build an ecosystem that can be shutdown like happened with Vine. That's why I built OpenVine—a retro tribute to the original Vine, but with a twist. It's completely open source and built on the Nostr protocol, meaning no single company can shut it down. Your vines live forever on a decentralized network, owned by you and the community.
Fighting for Digital Rights
OpenVine upholds the fundamental rights laid out in rights.social. We want every social media platform and protocol to uphold these basic rights:
- Right to Ownership: Your content belongs to you, not the platform
- Right to Portability: Take your data and followers anywhere
- Right to Privacy: Control who sees your content and how it's used
- Right to Transparency: Know how algorithms affect your content
- Right to Permanence: Your digital legacy shouldn't disappear overnight
The Vine shutdown should have been a wake-up call. We can't let corporate decisions destroy our digital culture again. OpenVine is built to last—decentralized, open source, and community-owned.
🔧 Built Different
Nostr Protocol
Decentralized and censorship-resistant. Your content, your control.
Direct Recording
No AI filters. No post-processing. Just authentic moments.
Open Source
Built by the community, for the community. Forever.
👨‍💻 Created by Rabble
Hi! I'm Rabble, and I built OpenVine because I missed the simplicity and authenticity of the original Vine. In a world of increasingly complex social media, sometimes you just want to capture a moment and share it—no filters, no AI, no algorithm deciding who sees it.
OpenVine is my love letter to the golden age of social video, when creativity thrived within constraints and authenticity was the only currency that mattered.
This project was inspired by Kyle Drake's Neocities, which beautifully revived the spirit of GeoCities. Just as Neocities brought back the joy of personal websites, OpenVine aims to resurrect the magic of spontaneous, creative video sharing.
đź“Ľ About the Vine Archive
Thanks to the heroic efforts of ArchiveTeam who worked tirelessly in 2017 to save most of Vine before it shut down, we've been able to recover many classic Vine videos. It's their hard work that made OpenVine's content restoration possible.
Unfortunately, we couldn't reliably link all videos back to their original creators. These videos are preserved here as a piece of internet history.
Our commitment: If we find a way to restore entire accounts or identify original creators, we will immediately give them back control of their content. If you're an original Vine creator and recognize your work, please reach out and we'll transfer ownership to you.
"Do it for the Vine!"
— Every creator, circa 2015
Ready to Loop Again?
Join us in bringing back the magic of 6-second storytelling.