February 11, 2020
By Joshua Kidd
Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann brings back six-second videos made popular by Vine with a newly launched app called Byte. According to a report from Sensor Tower, Byte’s launch has already surpassed over 1.3 million downloads in its first week. Seventy percent of the downloads were from the U.S., followed by the U.K. and Canada. During it's Partner Program pilot, 100% of ad revenue will be shared by Byte creators. Byte has already been dubbed as V.2 (Version 2) of the discontinued Vine app.
The app features 6 second long looping videos instead of TikTok's 15 second video feed. We signed up for the app on an android phone to see what Byte is all about first hand. The sign in process was very easy. The app opens with a black memorial screen with the words “In loving memory of Jacob Marttinen," a former Byte engineer who died in June 2019. The next screen is colorful and offers to sign in via Google. I signed in with my gmail and a touch of a button short delivered videos that mirror TikTok and Snapchat content in my feed.
There weren’t too many featured creators. Many profiles were capturing funny moments or quick video jokes. Some clips made me laugh while others were boring. I’m not sure that 6 seconds is enough time to get a joke or point across in most cases - another hurdle for Byte creators.
Byte’s announcements on Twitter boast the promise of revenue sharing from a “Partner Pool” with Byte creators. The money will come from ads, but Byte won’t have any pre-rolls ads before its six-second video clips, ads in a creator’s following feed or ads based on re-targeting, per a tweet. Payments will be paid to creators in 30 day installments based on the app's "Viewership Brackets."
It will be interesting to see if Byte's "Partner Pool' incentive for creators will ultimately give the company the competitive edge it needs to compete with tech giants - Facebook, Instagram, Quibi, TikTok, Youtube and Snapchat. Byte is now available on IOS and the Android play store.
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