Twitter's Vine announcement causes social stir

Twitter Inc announced Thursday that it will shut down the video-sharing mobile app Vine, in a bid to cut 9 percent of its workforce worldwide to keep costs down after beating Wall Street quarterly earnings expectations.

Twitter introduced Vine in January 2013 as a way for users to share short videos that were six seconds or less.

The service was popular with members of the microblogging site and gave rise to several so-called "Vine stars."

The news stirred up social media and #Vine quickly became the top-trending topic on Twitter in the US, with over 1.64 million tweets in just a few hours.

The decision comes after a failed attempt to sell Twitter as it fights stagnant user growth and stiffer competition from other social media platforms.

The Vine website will stay live even after the discontinuation of the mobile app, which will give users the opportunity to download and save any videos, said Twitter and Vine jointly in a post to the blog platform, Medium.

A Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters that the app will shutter in coming months but did not give an exact date.