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.

“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.

Now that we’ve moved to CA, I suppose it’s a good time to share what I’m up to next! In two weeks, I’ll be joining Facebook as a PM Director starting up a new initiative under the recently formed NPE team (https://t.co/HzK6Bjqzqx)

— Jason Toff (@jasontoff) July 15, 2019

Toff left Vine in 2016 (about one year before it shut down for good) to join Google. There, he worked on VR projects and in Google’s Area 120 incubator. He’s also spent time working at YouTube. As The Verge notes, Toff’s background could make him a natural fit for whatever new apps and experiences Facebook is hoping to roll out.

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.