TikTok-owner Bytedance shuts down its Vigo short video app

TikTok-owner Bytedance is shutting down its Vigo family of apps — Vigo Video and Vigo Lite. Founded in 2017, Vigo apps were focused on creating on lip-syncing videos — just like TikTok.

In a letter to its users, the company said it’s shutting down operations in India by October 31, and offering a period of transition to let people export their content to TikTok. Vigo has already stopped operating in Brazil and the Middle East. Now, it’s wrapping up operations in India and other remaining markets.

In January, a report from the Print noted that Vigo had more than 120 million active users worldwide. However, TechCrunch noted that the app had only 4 million active users last month, according to industry figures.

While Bytedance didn’t offer much explanation as to why it’s shutting down the Vigo apps, it supposedly doesn’t want to maintain another short video property when TikTok’s doing so well across the world.

TikTok has more than 600 million active users worldwide and more than 200 million active users in India. So, it doesn’t make sense for the company to keep another app alive, with a comparatively minuscule user base.

Bytedance is seemingly on a cleaning spree in the global market. Earlier this month, the Chinese tech giant discontinued its news aggregator app TopBuzz worldwide after it failed to get traction.