Startups

How one Philly creator plans to mourn the tragic death of Vine

Unpopular Now founder Peter Heacock built a career out of Vine. What’s next? “When the Mickey Mouse Club shut down, Justin Timberlake didn’t stop singing.”

Heacock said his agency will now be creating content for other social media platforms. (Courtesy photo)

If for some reason you thought your Thursday sucked, just wait till you hear about Philly-based Vine creator Peter Heacock’s.


See, the waiter-turned-Vine-creator found out — on Twitter, no less — that the social media platform he had poured his life and soul into was shutting down, as announced by the company through a Medium post on Thursday.
“Everybody’s in shock right now,” Heacock said. “The feeling is sadness. We helped to build a community around creativity, comedy and just having fun.”
Talk about a bad day at the office.

The CEO of creative agency Unpopular Now — which until recently had created Vine content for brands like Target, Starbucks and Chipotle — admits people weren’t vining as frequently as the olden days (you know, like, last year) but there was certainly still an audience to be tapped.
So what’s next for the four-person creative agency?
As expected, Heacock said the focus will be shifting to platforms like YouTube and Facebook where, he said, “ads are horrible.”
“As devastating as this is, myself and my company learned through [Vine] how to create really engaging short videos,” Heacock said. “And frankly, I’ll just take all of that knowledge and utilize it on other platforms.”
But we had to press for more. Will there be any layoffs or major changes coming to the agency? Here’s the only shift that’s planned for now:
“I’ll be posting on Instagram a hell of a lot more,” the creator said. “When the Mickey Mouse Club shut down, Justin Timberlake didn’t stop singing.”
To mourn Vine’s tragic and sudden downfall, Heacock and his agency will be throwing a #RIPVine online party on Nov. 3, uploading and sharing the best videos uploaded since the site was created in June 2012.


He even wrote a eulogy for the site that was published by Mashable over the weekend.
RIP, Vine. We hardly knew ye.

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