#problematicstakeintheground

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Visual Diary #11 | Problematic Stake in the Ground

People often forget about the time when the Vine app was extremely popular, it sort of just fell off the face of the Earth. Vine was twitter’s other video sharing app and I have researched some reasons as to why it failed in such a popular social media time period. 

I found an article that listed 5 reasons why Twitter’s Vine fell to its demise. 

1. Lack of audience ownership

2. Slow reaction the market

3. Twitter Cannibalism

4. Lack of commercial viability

5. (Too) rapid growth

These reasons don't seem to be enough on their own without explanations. I thought all along that it had something to do with the 10 second cap and all of the video sharing platforms were expanding their time limitations. Apparently, there was more to it than that. You can see the link here. https://www.dmnews.com/channel-marketing/social/blog/13042360/5-reasons-why-vine-failed

Basically, there were several factors as to why it failed. One of the main reasons that stood out to me was the fact that Vine never gave an advertisement outlet for businesses, which is possibly the largest driver of today’s video sharing platforms. Making your platform–that you don’t charge a membership fee for–available for advertising is what makes you money and therefore allows you to stay afloat. Basically they had all of these users and no partnerships with other companies which was a big miss-step on their part. 

Since I wasn’t aware that Twitter owned Vine, this next main factor seemed funny to me. In 2015 twitter launched it’s own video sharing capabilities and basically became the largest competitor for Vine. It makes sense why they didn’t try to save Vine, since they were a part of their own downfall. However, they did sort of lose their “stake in the ground” status when Snapchat and Instagram became wildly more popular than Vine. Twitter felt its best chance was going to back to its own roots and developing the video platform within. Although they did this, they still aren’t considered the highest ranked platform when it comes to video sharing. Vine grew very quickly but didn’t have enough juice from the business aspect to remain relevant.

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Visual Diary #11 |  Problematic Stake in the Ground

The Wii U

Arguably one of the worst gaming console flops in history, the Wii U failed miserably in comparison to the ever-famous Wii system. While the concept was there in regards to portability, it fell short in many ways. See this link here for more details https://www.svg.com/112351/wii-u-flopped/.

This article describes several key parts as to why the Wii U flopped, but I want to focus on Nintendo’s problematic stake in the ground. Nintendo has a specific audience and is usually geared toward what they consider more “casual” gamers. I feel that description is fairly accurate, especially when it comes to the Wii. The Wii was all about being able to play with motion and multi-player ease. It was a great console for parties and kids playing with friends, etc. The Wii was incredibly successful as Nintendo placed their stake in the ground for this type of gaming console that was heavily motion-based.

Therefore, the expectations were set very high when they came out with their next console, the Wii U. In the article it mentions how Nintendo partially blames the timing of their console and the rise of game play on tablets. All in all, it made the Wii U obsolete and not up to anyone’s expectations for its attempted purpose in the gamin industry. 

I felt this was a good example for this topic because when Nintendo placed its stake in the ground with the Wii, it set expectations very high for the next release and the Wii U was anything but “wow”. Nintendo redeemed their reputation with the Nintedo Switch, which outsold the Wii U in just 10 months!

It’s amazing how companies that place a stake in the ground are held to such a high standard. It’s very reminiscent of how the Apple standard is so high and the scrutiny they receive when any of their products are less than impressive.