Where Are Your Favorite Vine Stars Today?

When Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov agreed to sell the up-and-coming company to Twitter back in October 2012, he probably expected his prized video-sharing platform to take up a place alongside the biggest names in the social media game. Just four years after shelling out a reported $30 million for Vine, however, the new owners gave up on it and shut the service down. "Don't sell your company!" Yusupov tweeted upon hearing the news, and many of Vine's biggest stars were equally unhappy with the decision. 

A number of top creators came together to thrash out a last-ditch plan to save the platform, proposing a deal in which the most popular Viners would be paid to pump out regular quality content, content that would theoretically keep Vine afloat. In the end it just wasn't worth the risk for Twitter — the company desperately needed to cut costs and Vine wasn't taking root in a market flooded with too many powerful competitors.

"Snapchat is a superior video product and is constantly improving," Jared Augustine, social marketing expert and CEO of Thuzio, told Variety in 2016. "Instagram simply lives in a much larger ecosystem via Facebook. For these reasons, Vine's top influencers have been leaving the platform for greener pastures." But was the grass greener on the other side? It's now been a couple of years since Vine was sent to the social media graveyard, and it's time to find out what your favorite Viners are doing with themselves today.

Logan Paul's path to fame can be traced back to his days at Ohio University. The energetic freshman became known on campus as the kid with a big following on Vine (the university even ran a story about him as he approached a million followers), and before long Paul had his sights set on Hollywood. "I want to be the biggest entertainer in the world," he told AdWeek in 2016. At one point, it seemed as though he was on track to achieve this goal.

After taking much of his following over to YouTube, Paul's stock continued to rise. He won a cameo role in the remake of Baywatch (his scene was eventually cut) and struck up a relationship with leading man Dwayne Johnson, who even started appearing in his vlogs. He set a new YouTube record in 2017 when he became the quickest creator in history to hit 10 million subscribers, but things took a turn for the worse by the beginning of 2018 when the social media influencer's name suddenly became toxic.

Paul faced a huge backlash after he included footage of a suicide victim in one of his vlogs. He apologized for his lack of judgement, though YouTube ultimately decided to cut ties with him. His channel still has a huge following, however, and he made history again in August 2018 by participating in "the biggest white collar boxing match" ever, facing off against fellow YouTuber, KSI. The six-round bout ended in a draw.

Like Logan, Jake Paul managed to transfer his sizeable Vine following to YouTube. Speaking to People in 2016, the younger Paul brother revealed that he never set out to become a social media star. "I wanted to go into the NFL, so when I was 10, my dad got my brother and me a video camera so we could record our games." One day, the ultra-competitive siblings got caught up in "an argument about who could make a better video," and they decided to use Vine to find out. "Within six months we were making more money than our parents," Jake claims.

According to CNBC, he'd banked his first million dollars by the time he was 19. His surge in popularity didn't go unnoticed by Disney, who cast him in Bizaardvark. As was the case with his brother, however, inexperience and immaturity derailed Jake's rise. After reports that he was making life hell for his West Hollywood neighbors emerged, Jake parted ways with Disney, though he's always maintained he wasn't fired. "I have outgrown the [Disney] Channel and feel it's time to move forward in my career," he tweeted.

Jake fought on the undercard for his brother's August 2018 bout with KSI, defeating British YouTuber, Deji. "This year has been tough — controversies, lawsuits, friendship fallouts, the list goes on," a bloodied Jake said after his opponent threw in the towel (via Metro). "This fight for me was fighting against all of those things."

For Philadelphia native Brittany Furlan, Vine was a last-ditch effort to get her name out. "It was like this weird little saving grace in a way, because I was at such a horrible point in my career," the actress told Bustle. "I was like, 'Nothing's going to happen, I should just move home and give up,' and then it changed my whole life." By 2014, Furlan was pumping out regular content for her 5 million followers and had become known as the Queen of Vine.

That follower count nearly doubled by the time Vine was axed, but Furlan had already decided to jump ship at that stage. "I kind of saw it coming in a way, because all of the most popular people had left the platform." While she went on to achieve her goal of becoming an actress, today she's better known for her relationship with Mötley Crüe drummer, Tommy Lee. The rock legend proposed to Furlan on Valentine's Day 2018, surprising her with a massive, heart-shaped diamond ring.

This will be Lee's fourth marriage, and his most recent ex-wife has been sharing her thoughts on it. Pamela Anderson accused Furlan of enabling Lee's alcoholism after Brandon (the oldest of the former Baywatch star's two sons with Lee) punched his dad during an intervention gone wrong. "His fiancée keeps him drunk," Anderson said. "This is what he wants — someone to behave badly with." Furlan denied this, telling Hollywood Life that she's "only ever loved and supported Tommy."

If Brittany Furlan was the Queen of Vine, then King Bach was... well, he was the king. It was Furlan who introduced Bach (real name Andrew Bachelor) to the platform back in 2013, and by the end of that year he was already making money from sponsored videos, charging companies thousands of dollars for six-second ads. "My first Vines sucked, they were horrible," he told the Daily Beast. "But I started studying and seeing which Vines got the most likes ... Now I've almost mastered the structure of what people like to look at on Vine."

He officially mastered that structure in 2015 when he became the most followed creator on Vine, a feat that opened doors to more traditional forms of entertainment. Bachelor appeared in two parody movies in 2016 (Fifty Shades of Black and Meet the Blacks) and the following year he had a small part in Netflix's critically acclaimed horror-comedy, The Babysitter. He finally made his debut as a leading man in 2017's Where's The Money (a college crime caper that also featured fellow Vine alum Logan Paul), but the critics weren't exactly blown away.

"Andrew 'King Bach' Bachelor is amiable but hardly star material here," The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore said. "A light comedy that dabbles in racial commentary but pulls in too many directions simultaneously, Scott Zabielski's Where's the Money puts a Vine celebrity in the lead and finds that mastery of a six-second video format is no predictor of big-screen success." Oof. 

The Eh Bee Family had 3.1 million followers on Vine when it evaporated in 2016, and like most Viners, they decided to start concentrating on YouTube instead. The trouble was, YouTube was already packed with successful family channels at that point, which made finding their footing a little tricky to begin with. "Our biggest challenge was being able to find our unique style," the four-member family told Entrepreneur. "We didn't want to post daily family vlogs, as we feel there are others that already exist and do a great job at that. As we started on Vine, going beyond six-second content was also a challenge ... but we feel that we've been able to create a variety of entertaining content that varies in length."

One of their first moves post-Vine was to upload all of the six-second clips they'd ever made to YouTube as one huge, hour-long video. That compilation has been watched almost 18 million times since and their total channel views exceed 1.6 billion, meaning they now get recognized everywhere they go. That kind of popularity equals big bucks, but is the exposure healthy for kids?

"No one knows what the implications [of family vlogging] will be in the future, and so for us, every single step, we think, 'How is this going to affect [our kids] in 15 years?'" mother Rossana Burgos told Time. "We don't think putting up videos every day is a good idea, especially when you have children involved."

Venezuelan beauty Lele Pons had to work harder than most to make it as a social media star. Her family moved to the States when she was 5, meaning she was playing catch up as soon as she arrived, and the fact she was dyslexic certainly didn't help matters. "I didn't know how to read, I didn't know how to speak in English," she told Young Hollywood. "I came here in the United States and I had to learn how to learn, and then I learned everything else. So, I was always excluded from a lot of people in the beginning."

That all changed when she got her first phone and started making Vines. Pons went from being an outsider to one of the most popular kids at her high school because of her creative and often hilarious online output. Before long, she realized that her childhood dream was actually within reach. "I always wanted to be a singer," she revealed to Teen Vogue. "I was going to finish school and go to Berkeley, and then Vine came out ... It's honestly changed my life."

She dropped her debut music video in May 2018, a Spanish-language duet with fellow internet star, Matt Hunter. Pons released her insanely popular follow-up "Celoso" (which means "Jealous Guy") in August 2018, not long after hosting the 2018 Teen Choice Awards alongside Nick Cannon. She also snagged a gig as the host of the Mexican version of The Voice.

Boston boy Jerry Purpdrank realized pretty early on in life that if he wanted the kind of job he'd been dreaming of, he needed to head for Los Angeles. "I decided my career path when everything else in life was not going good," Purpdrank told Complex in 2017. "I was failing [school]. My job sucked. So I decided I might as well do something I loved instead of doing something I hate." He needed a way to support himself out west, and Vine was the answer.

Purpdrank became a Viner when the service was still in its infancy, and by its first birthday he was one of its biggest stars with almost 3 million followers. "Vine allowed me to move from Boston to LA with some of my best friends, so we could work day in and day out," he said back in 2014. "I get to have fun, laugh, and live my dream thanks to Vine and all of my amazing fans and supporters." At the time, Complex predicted that Vine would somehow survive the introduction of Instagram stories, but after Vine's closure, Purpdrank had no choice but to jump ship.

Unlike many Viners, Purpdrank didn't thrive on YouTube (he's released several original rap songs on his channel, but he has less than 300,000 subscribers over there) because short form video has always been his forte. He's much more suited to Instagram, where he continues to pump out regular comedy sketches for his 3 million followers.

Most of Vine's top content creators were upset by its demise, but California dad Jason Nash took the news particularly badly. Nash had 2.7 million followers on Vine when parent company Twitter decided to pull the plug, and he was well aware that convincing all of those people to follow him to different platforms was going to be a challenge. "Vine was dying and declining for a long time, but I never thought they would total it completely," a devastated Nash told The Drum in 2016. "It's crazy to think that people built millions upon millions of followers, and now it's just gone."

Nash revealed that he was pretty angry when he found out that Vine was not going to be saved, admitting that he thought his fifteen minutes of fame were well and truly over. "I used to walk around the mall and hear people say, 'It's that Vine guy!'" he said. "Now they can't say that, because it doesn't exist anymore." Luckily for the comedian, his prediction about not being able to attract followers elsewhere was completely wrong. His audience today is exactly the same size as it was back then, it's just split across different platforms.

Nash told The Drum that he was going to "continue pursuing comedy on other platforms like Instagram and YouTube," and he's managed to adapt to both platforms very well — at the time of writing, he has 1.2 million Instagram followers and 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.

North Carolina native Nash Grier rose to fame as part of the Magcon (short for meet and greet convention) collective, a group of teenage influencers who toured the country together, making Vines and meeting up with their fans along the way. The Magcon boys were packing out shopping malls nationwide at one stage, but by 2014 most of the members had decided to do their own thing. The largely female fanbase took the breakup of Magcon pretty hard, but Grier (one of the most prominent members) was dreaming of bigger things.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Grier began studying the art of movie making. Speaking to the Charlotte Observer, the aspiring star revealed that he'd spent countless hours teaching himself "the language of cinematography" and "the best ways to communicate" with a camera lens. His social media presence has continued to grow since Vine went under (he has 4.7 million subscribers on YouTube and just shy of 10 million Instagram followers), but his dreams of making it big in Hollywood haven't come to fruition quite yet.

Grier used his social media clout to push his debut film The Outfield to the top of the iTunes drama chart in 2015, but no amount of online influence could help 2017's You Get Me to succeed. In fact, Cinema Crazed called the Netflix teen flick a "derivative and silly Fatal Attraction wannabe that wouldn't even pass muster in a discount movie theater." Ouch. 

Cameron Dallas was also a prominent member of the Magcon group, but unlike the aforementioned Nash Grier, he's never distanced himself from it. Dallas and Grier (or Cash, as they were collectively known by fans) lived together in 2014 and were basically BFFs, but as the years passed, these two Vine superstars seemingly grew apart. After purchasing the rights to the Magcon name, Dallas attempted to corral the original Magcon guys for a brand new tour, taking to Twitter to guilt trip his former partners in crime into a big reunion. "Some things are just meant to stay in the past," Grier said (via Superfame) in response. Ouch!

Undeterred, Dallas decided to recruit some new members for Magcon instead, and the new tour became the focus of his Netflix reality series, Chasing Cameron. "When I found out that it was green lit ... I just started jumping around, I was so happy," he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "This is something that has been so long in the making and the process has been very excruciating, to say the least."

The docu-series was negatively reviewed (one critic called Chasing Cameron "propaganda for its star") but that hasn't slowed Dallas down one bit. The Californian has an incredible 40 million followers across Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and he's on the verge of becoming a genuine pop star — In 2018, Dallas signed a record deal with Columbia, the same label that handles both Beyonce and Adele.