Twitter has no short-term plans to monetize Vine, a social product that it purchased in its infancy.
The information was shared during the company’s earnings call, following a quarterly financial report that included stronger-than-expected third-quarter performance but soft guidance and user growth that investors found troubling. Twitter is down more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that his “immediate term and immediate focus on Vine are continuing to build beautiful content-creation tools for all of the users of that service.”
It will eventually, of course, but not for some time it seems.
Twitter purchased Vine before the app launched. When it did make it into the hands of the public, Vine became a sensation, shooting to the top of the app store’s charts. Interest in the product grew quickly, but plateaued — interest remains near historical highs, but doesn’t appear to indicate that Vine’s virality is increasing in time.
Vine is an important property for Twitter as it could help prop up the larger company’s user growth rates in the future. Facebook has made similar bets on Instagram and WhatsApp.