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Join nowand also get a VIP ticket to GamesBeat Next (Nov 2-3, SF).Divine, the six-second looping video app with a mission to put creative power back in human hands, is launching on August 20.
It also announced Taco Bell as its first brand collaboration. The launch follows nearly
nine months of development and community-building. The aim is to create a better future for social media.
The name is a twist on Twitter’s early video service, Vine, and it was, no surprise, started by early Twitter employeeEvan Henshaw-Plath (known online as Rabble). It has financial backing and support from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey.
Divine bans AI-generated content in the app. Now it’s moving ahead with new creator tools, a growing community and first steps toward commercialization.
Created by Rabble, a member of Twitter’s founding team, Divine aims to reinvent a social media landscape shaped by black-box algorithms, remove the pressure on creators to optimize for engagement, and eliminate the growing volume of AI-generated slop. Its approach is deliberately different: give people the freedom to create for each other, not for an algorithm.
This philosophy is already influencing the vibrant content and communities emerging on Divine. Creators are developing original memes, setting weekly creative challenges and forming their own groups, including the self-named “Late Night Insomniacs Club.” The result is content that is genuine, raw, funny, and occasionally weird.
“By stripping away the pressure to create content that gets picked up by an ad algorithm, we’ve uncovered what it is that people actually want to create,” said Rabble, CEO of Divine, in a statement. “That’s the magic of Divine. People are making loops fueled by an original idea and their desire to share with others, not because a recommendation engine is making them guess what will perform. We are starting a movement to make social media feel creative, joyful and human again.”
Improved Tools and Trust and Safety #
Divine said it has recently expanded its creative toolkit with features including Stop Motion animation, ‘Inspired By’, creator tipping, Divine Kids and Divine Greenlight, giving creators more ways to make, discover and build on the work of others.
“As a technologist and online safety researcher, I spend a lot of time thinking about how the design of technology shapes what people do, how they relate to one another, and ultimately what kinds of communities emerge,” said Liz Sweigart, cofounder of Divine, in a statement. “We’ve focused on making Divine more creative, collaborative, and human by giving people more ways to make, respond, and participate vs. only consuming what an algorithm puts in front of them.”
Built for Creators #
Divine has a broad commitment to helping creators establish trust, build their presence and grow businesses that are not dependent on any single platform. That commitment extends to Divine’s underlying technology. Built on the open Nostr protocol, Divine is designed not to be a walled garden. Its open-source foundations provide greater transparency while giving creators ownership of their identity and content rather than locking both inside a closed platform.
Taco Bell and Divine #
The public launch also marks an important milestone for Divine, with Taco Bell becoming the platform’s first brand partner as part of the brand’s latest Decades campaign, which brings back four beloved Taco Bell menu icons that were available in 2016 for a limited time.
Taco Bell fans will receive early access to join Divine by using the code TACO-BELL to create an account, ahead of the public launch this Thursday. The partnership brings together two unique and fiercely loyal communities with strong cultures of participation and fandom. Looking ahead, Divine’s aim is for brands to contribute creatively to the communities they enter, rather than interrupting them with conventional advertising.
Divine is Built Different for An Open Social Internet #
“Open protocols give people greater control over their identity and content instead of locking them into a single platform. That foundation matters if we want a more open social internet and a future where creators have real ownership over what they build,” said Jack Dorsey, in a statement.
With invite codes removed, Divine is now open to everyone.
Divine said it focused on just raw, creative videos made by real humans, and a place on the internet to call your own. Choose your own algorithm and trade doomscrolling for joyscrolling. Divine believes what you create should belong to you, not Divine.
That’s why Divine is built on the open Nostr protocol, giving creators true ownership of their content and users more freedom. Inspired by Vine and home to more than
2.5 million Vine classics, Divine is 100% independent, with no affiliation to Vine, Twitter, or X.