Here’s how the program works: every 120 days, Byte will establish a pool of funds that it will divide between participating creators. Participants go up a “Viewership Bracket” ladder the more views they get, and going up a bracket means earning more money. Everyone in a bracket earns the same amount and will be paid every 30 days. The program kicks off on April 15th, and up to 100 participants will be sharing the first cash pool ($250,000). Unfortunately, only creators based in the US are eligible at the moment, though Byte says it’s working on a way to open the program to people outside the country.

Like it or not, the Vine revival app Byte is bringing in a staple of modern social networks: prominent ads. The looping video app has launched its first ad campaign with Nike, which is running a rathe conspicuous “Self Hail Mary” sponsored section alongside the usual categories. It’s easy to avoid watching the videos if you don’t particularly care for them, but there’ll be no doubt that Nike paid for obvious placement.

The money for the pool will come from ads, but Byte stressed that you won’t see pre-rolls, mid-feed ads or retargeting. The pilot phase of the program will funnel all of the ad revenue to Partner Program members, although that’s clearly going to change once the effort launches in earnest.

Don’t expect to start making a living as a Byte influencer for a while. The pilot is due to start in the US in 60 to 90 days, and it’ll be invitation-only at first. The company is promising “multiple ways” to help creators get paid, though, so you may have other ways to rake in cash if and when you hit the big time. The challenge, of course, is building up Byte in the first place. It’s still soon to know if Byte will recreate Vine’s heyday and lure people away from the likes of Instagram or TikTok, or meet the untimely fate of many other social media apps.

Launch Byte, and you’ll find all the usual trappings of video capture apps. There’s your feed with constantly looping six-second videos, an Explore page where you can look at other accounts, an Activity page with the usual “like” and “follow” notifications, a personal profile page and, of course, the center camera button, which is what you’d use to capture your six-second works of art.

Much like Vine of yore, the interface is fairly simple — there are no selfie filters or crazy effects here. You can, of course, remix existing videos from your camera roll, and there is a Ghost Mode, which helps with positioning in time-lapse or stop-motion videos. But otherwise, the creativity is up to you.

This is in stark contrast to the other big name in the short-video world: TikTok. Instead of six seconds, TikTok videos are up to 15 seconds long (or you can pull four together for 60 seconds). You can add songs to create your own little mini music video, or “Duets,” where you add to another person’s video. These sorts of features make TikTok the perfect medium for viral memes, where anyone can have their 15 minutes of fame simply by dancing to a hooky song. It’s such an influence in popular culture that Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” skyrocketed from TikTok meme to Billboard sensation in just a few months.

pic.twitter.com/tNzJ4bOup0

— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge) January 25, 2020

To highlight how much of a foothold TikTok has in this space, one of the first trends to emerge on Byte is about, well, TikTok. Scroll through the Popular page, and you’ll see Byte videos making fun of TikTok and warning newbies not to post their TikToks. One popular Byte video captioned “TikTok dancers trying to use Byte” shows the user starting to dance, but he stops awkwardly, because his six seconds are up. Sure, these Byte videos are dragging TikTok, but they probably wouldn’t be doing that if it wasn’t so popular in the first place.

Yet, Byte seems very aware of TikTok’s popularity and is working on a few ways to address that. One of TikTok’s features, for example, is the For You suggestions feed that pushes to the top the most popular or viral videos based on your use of the app. In comparison, Byte has a For Your Consideration video that pops up in your feed occasionally to help you discover new content. Hoffman said the team is working on a recommendation feed very similar to TikTok’s, which should help with reach. “We didn’t start with it because there wasn’t enough activity in beta to properly test it, but now we can,” he tweeted.

we’re working on a recommendation feed that learns as you use the app and should also help with reach. we didn’t start with it because there wasn’t enough activity in beta to properly test it, but now we can. you can follow our algorithm changelog here: https://t.co/pvL0eALsYl https://t.co/cJFzSeos1S

— dom hofmann (@dhof) January 25, 2020

There are other, more unique features of Byte, too. You can change the app’s icon to one of nine styles, and you can set the camera to record by tapping anywhere on the screen. There’s also a unique point system of collecting “stars” for the more followers and views you get. Hoffman says this is for fun right now, but perhaps there could be more use for them later on.

Additionally, TikTok doesn’t currently have a way to help its content creators make money, while Byte, perhaps learning from Vine’s mistakes, has a partner program in the works. “Byte celebrates creativity and community, and compensating creators is one important way we can support both,” the company tweeted.

very soon, we’ll introduce a pilot version of our partner program which we will use to pay creators. byte celebrates creativity and community, and compensating creators is one important way we can support both. stay tuned for more info.

— byte (@byte_app) January 25, 2020

Importantly, Hoffman seems to understand that one of the most important parts of Vine was its community. It launched a Byte community forum alongside its announcement a couple of years ago, and Hoffman says the Byte team is fairly active in responding to users and finding out what features they want.

Still, it’s unclear if Byte can truly pick up where Vine left off. With Snapchat and Instagram Stories picking up the mantle for short ephemeral snippets, and TikTok, those viral memes, a simple six-second-video app might not be able to compete. Appetites for short videos may have changed, and Byte’s super-simple interface could be too dependent on creator imaginations, at least in its current incarnation. Plus, Byte has quite a few teething problems already; it often crashes during longer video edits, the Android version doesn’t let you block accounts and it’s currently inundated with spam bots.

Yet, Vine’s legacy could very well be reason enough for Byte to exist. In a world where so much of the internet is hostage to ad buys and sponsored content, it’s so refreshing to see an app like Byte that is dedicated to creativity, fun and just straight-up wackiness. That was what Vine delivered. It helped make the internet wonderful and weird. And perhaps that alone makes the Byte endeavor worthwhile.

Byte’s app store description notes: “Nostalgia is our starting point, but where we go next is up to you.” Here’s hoping it figures that out.

“We’re aware of the issues with comment spam and more widely with certain types of comments,” founder Dom Hofman wrote in a community post. “This is our top priority and we’re working very hard to address it. It should be noticeably better than it was 24 hours ago and should continue to improve over the next little while.”

Byte is trying to address that short-term issue, but has also promised comment changes in the medium term. Namely, it will introduce the ability to like comments and block, filter or limit commenting. Byte also said that it’s “ramping up on video moderation and you should see improvements there soon.”

There’s a good reason why creators are resorting to comment spam to gather followers. Byte has promised to deliver a partner program in the near future that will pay creators for videos, though it hasn’t said exactly how. Other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat don’t offer direct monetization, so many folks use those apps to get eyeballs over to YouTube, which does pay ad revenue to creators.

Byte users therefore want to be ready with as many followers as possible when the app does monetize, hence the spam. Tamping that down could be tricky — so far, follow spam still makes up the majority of comments on popular Byte videos I’ve looked at so far.

In 2017 Twitter pulled the plug on Vine, and left a community of extremely-short-form-video creators without a platform. Since then TikTok has flourished, but it’s still not the same thing. Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann has been teasing a sequel since late in 2017, and after months of being in closed beta, Byte is now available to everyone on Android and iOS.

A partner program to pay creators for their work is supposed to arrive “soon,” and you sign up using either your Google account or Apple ID. If you’re curious, the community guidelines are here, and the privacy notice is here. The app is video first, with a focus on getting stuff in front of you quickly just like Vine always did and TikTok does now. Will it be as addictive as either of those? Judging by the track record, probably, but it all depends on what people make of the app.

As you can see from Hofmann’s early demo of the app, Byte has the same feel as Vine, but delivers vertical videos instead of the boxed loops of its predecessor. TechCrunch also reports that the current version only allows direct camera recordings — meaning no uploads — and features a feed with Likes and comments but no account follows. Those missing features are said to be on the way, however.

the byte beta we’ve been running with friends and family *feels* exactly like the vine friends and family beta, down to the weird but appealing randomness of the videos. that’ll change as we expand, but it’s a pretty good sign pic.twitter.com/rBbQrNtTJ7

— dom hofmann (@dhof) April 22, 2019

With TikTok now counting over 500 million daily active users, the Byte team have a lot of work to do. Their first priority, according to Hofmann, is to learn from Vine’s mistakes and look after content creators. Vine’s most influential users jumped to YouTube and other video platforms when it became clear they couldn’t earn directly from the service, hastening the app’s demise.

Although the world moved on after Vine was killed, Byte hopes it call fill a niche between the mass-uploads of Instagram and teen culture of TikTok. However, it may find that Vine 2.0 has come to the party too late to make a new name for itself.