Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann said Thursday he plans on launching a successor to his once hugely popular video-looping app next year.
Hofmann said in a tweet that the new app would be called Byte, and that the aim is for the platform to be launched in spring 2019.
When asked by one Twitter use whether the new service would be "v2" — meaning a follow-up to Vine — Hofmann responded: "Yes." The Vine successor had previously been referred to as "V2" by its creator.
Details about the Vine successor are sparse so far, with just a website inviting prospective users to sign up for updates and potential content creators to join its "creator program." CNBC reached out to Hofmann on Twitter for a comment but a response was not available immediately.
As for backing, Vine's co-founder said his new firm has funding, a team and a product behind it.
Hofmann's announcement comes more than two years after Twitter — Vine's former owner — first said it would shutter the service. The app was officially discontinued in January 2017, and the company said later that month that it had created an internet archive for people to view Vine clips.
The service — which let users share six-second videos that could be viewed repeatedly on a loop — was a big enabler for some of the most well-known so-called social media "influencers," including YouTube video makers Logan and Jake Paul and pop artist Shawn Mendes.
It was reportedly bought by Twitter in October 2012 for $30 million, a few months prior to its launch. The app became wildly popular, once becoming the most-downloaded free app on Apple's iOS App Store.
The announcement of the new service doesn't come as a particularly huge surprise, since Hofmann has been vocal about the project since late last year. Doubts were raised on its eventual release after the Vine co-creator said in a forum for the project earlier this year that he had "made the very difficult decision of postponing" it.
The market for a short-form video app is not short of competition, however, with multiple players including Facebook-owned Instagram and Snap Inc's Snapchat vying for dominance in the space.
