November 4, 2016

Vine’s Demise Shouldn’t Dissuade Mergers

Twitter may have shut down Vine, but this doesn't mean that all acquisitions are doomed to fail.

Sometimes, tech company acquisitions don't work out as planned. Vine was one of those companies.

Founded in 2012, the short-form video service was acquired by Twitter later that year, leading to a significant jump in popularity. However, despite reaching 200 million active users as of December 2015, Vine's performance was not enough to make up for Twitter's struggles. The microblogging platform has had a hard time posting the revenue growth that its investors want to see, and recently announced 350 job cuts in response, according to the New York Times. 

Most notably, Twitter also announced the shuttering of Vine.

The news certainly came as a shock to many loyal users, and also served as a particularly stark reminder that even high-profile tech deals can still fail. As a recent Fortune article pointed out, "acquiring technology is a highly evolved art form." It takes knowledge of the business, good judgment and a little luck to make such deals work.

This is not to say that acquiring a tech company is a bad idea. There have been numerous examples of massive successes that did not always seem so – consider, for example, Apple's purchase of SoundJam, an obscure software company that later created iTunes and changed the music industry, according to Fortune For those who make it work, the rewards can be great.

Companies looking bring new talent into their organizations can get assistance that will increase the chances of success. A mergers and acquisitions firm can help you negotiate a great deal that will put your company on solid footing for the future.