Faced with nine straight quarters of slowing revenue growth, Twitter announced on Thursday that it is making some moves to cut expenses, by cutting 9% of its workforce and shutting down its Vine short video streaming service. Now comes an offer to save the six-second streamer, and it comes from an unexpected savior, online porn streaming company PornHub.
Twitter’s decision to cut costs follows an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer for the short messaging service and its related services. Apple, Disney, Google, and Salesforce had all been mentioned as possible suitors, but none of the possible buyers could swallow the terms.
While Vine has proved popular with users, the all powerful advertising bloc found the service’s six-second video format limiting. “To me, Vine was always a bit too quirky for mass user appeal,” Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at advertising industry research firm EMarketer told The LA Times. “With so many other places to put digital video advertising, Vine just didn’t take root for marketers.”
However, Vine’s six-second “spurts” of video is quite attractive to Pornhub VP, Corey Price, who penned a letter to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, with an offer to save the service, and “restore it back to its NSFW glory.” PornHub was kind enough to share the tongue-in-cheek offer letter with MacTrast, but not kind enough to share a free subscription. (Rest your Twitter fingers folks, we’re just kidding!)
Price says his service and Vine have a lot in common, and that there is a place for the service at PornHub. Plus, considering the layoffs and shutdown of Vine, he figures Twitter could use a cash injection. No comment as yet from Twitter on PornHub’s “offer.”
Twitter has assured users that the Vine website would stay live even after the mobile app is discontinued, giving users the chance to download and save their videos.
(Damn, I really thought I’d come up with a lot more double entendres for this story than I did…)
