Vine Founder Dead at 35

Colin Kroll was discovered in his New York apartment
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 16, 2018 3:53 PM CST
Vine Founder Dead at 35
Colin Kroll.   (YouTube)

Colin Kroll, a tech executive who co-founded the HQ Trivia app, has died. He was 35, the AP reports. The New York Police Department says officers went to Kroll's Manhattan apartment early Sunday after getting a call asking for a wellness check on him. They found him unconscious and unresponsive on his bed. He was pronounced dead at the scene. TMZ says he "died of an apparent drug overdose," but the medical examiner's office will determine cause of death. Kroll was the chief executive of the trivia app, which live-streams short trivia shows to users and became popular after its release in 2017. He also was a founder of Vine, which was an app built around six-second videos, and worked for a period at Twitter.

But Vine was scuttled four years after Twitter bought it in 2012, and HQ Trivia had fallen in popularity, falling from iTunes' list of 100 free games, per CNN. What's more, Intermedia Labs—a business he co-founded that created HQ Trivia—was said to be in disorder. Kroll recently ousted co-founder Rus Yusupov and engaged in behavior that one source told Re/Code was "inappropriate and unprofessional." Kroll had been fired from Twitter for poor managerial skills, and had a reputation for behaving poorly with some female colleagues—although a Kroll probe by an outside investigator "yielded no concerns," the company said.

(More tech industry stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X