Vine Co-Founders Unveil 'HYPE' Live Video Broadcasting App

Last week, Twitter announced its plans to shut down its once-popular video sharing platform Vine as the company is planning to cut down on its costs after performing below Wall Street's expectations in quarterly earnings. Even though Vine was not performing as well as some of the other social media platforms, the news did come as a shock to many. Now, the co-founders of Vine have unveiled their new live video broadcasting app, named HYPE, which might act as a direct competitor to Facebook's live videos.

Launched first in the beta phase, the HYPE app is now available to download via the App Store. The live video broadcasting app will soon be made available for Android, its founders said. HYPE may have a few tricks up its sleeve that might concern its competition. HYPE allows users to add music as well as other animations to their videos. Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, both co-founders of Vine, introduced their app through website Product Hunt on Thursday. To recall, the duo alongside Dom Hofmann had sold Vine to Twitter in 2013 for $30 million.

Kroll and Yusupov held a live session on their upcoming app, during which they and talked about Vine and tooks questions from their viewers, as reported by Fortune.

It will be interesting to see if HYPE will be able to compete against the already established players as big names are increasingly taking interest in live video broadcasting. The app will compete head on against Twitter's Periscope and Facebook's Live video efforts.

Facebook has recently taken many steps to provide support for its live video feature. The social networking giant announced last week the support for streaming Live Videos through devices such as Chromecast. Recent leaks have further suggested that company's photo sharing platform Instagram will soon be getting the support for live videos.

Given that Facebook's live videos feature already has a head-start and a much larger ecosystem than the upcoming app will have, it will definitely need more than a few tricks to survive this battle between David and Goliath.