Looped Videos App Coub To Shut Down April 1st

Coub, a website and app for creating short looped videos launched in 2012, will be shutting down its servers on April 1st after running for over a decade.

The app, which allows its users to create looped videos up to 10 seconds long and combine them with music in creative ways, achieved some online popularity in the mid-2010s but never quite managed to compete with the likes of YouTube, Vine and TikTok. Coub will be going dark in two weeks, the owner company Komitet has announced.

Despite remaining strictly in the meme underground, over the last 10 years, the app's community managed to produce quite a few videos that would later go viral elsewhere.

Coub was created by Russian entrepreneurs Anton and Igor Gladkovorodov and developer Mikhain Tabunov in 2012. The app remained particularly popular with Russian users.

Komitet, which acquired Coub in early 2020, has sought to sell the app since December 2021, was unable to attract a buyer.

Coub users have been advised to download their creations until the servers go dark. On the Coub subreddit, several users announced plans to write a script for batch downloading one's favorite videos, while the core Coub community has been flocking to a Telegram channel to discuss possible options for migration.