Whether you’re listening in on the office millenials’ conversations, or you’ve been recently scrolling through your Twitter feed, you may have heard the term Vero more than once this past week. No, it’s not a new energy drink company or fitness workout craze; it’s a social media app promising to change the landscape of social media entirely.
Does Vero live up to these bold claims? It’s too early to tell, but the recent buzz about the social app – which actually debuted in 2015 – has caught the attention of online users everywhere. Vero, similar to Instagram, is a content sharing platform, which focuses on high quality photo and video sharing. The app also provides messaging capabilities, the ability to post photos without forced cropping, and the social aspect of commenting on your connection’s posts. The major difference? Vero promises that it will be ad-free, forever. How is this possible? Well Vero is free for now (for the first 1 million subscribers) but there will be a charge for future users in order to keep the platform advertisement free. Vero also promises to keep the platform chronological with its posts, a change that Instagram has recently implemented that has frustrated some users.
We know, this sounds too good to be true. And truthfully, it might be. Vero makes bold promises to its’ users – promises it might not be able to keep.
Red Flags
One of the most frustrating aspects of Vero’s growing popularity is the strain it has putting on the platform. With the recent explosion in curiosity surround Vero, the app has not been able to withstand the influx of traffic. Many new users have been experiencing issues registering for the platform, or even utilizing its capabilities because of slow loading times or “service errors.” Vero went to Twitter to explain these issues and their plan of action moving forward stating, “We’re experiencing an outage due to heavy load. Apologies again for the issues we’re having. We’re working to restore things. We really appreciate your patience.”
Vero’s promises of an ad-free platform are also concerning for many other social media specialists. Paul Armstrong of Forbes expressed his concerns stating, “Advertising is a necessary evil and without it – even with a firm subscription model – anything is unlikely to do anything other than burn money. My issue is that the current climate isn’t conducive to this sort of platform succeeding – ask Snap or anyone else.” The subscription model has yet to work for any other major platform; will it work for the new guy Vero? Instagram is still one of the major players in online advertising. With Instagram, the audience is already there and its advertising capabilities make it easy to promote your business. Why fix what isn’t necessarily broken?
Is Vero the second coming for social media platforms? Who can tell! The platform’s features provide a few advantages that seem to be important to users, and the hype for the app has definitely been building. Whether it’s Vero, or any other new social media platform, we always advice businesses owners to wait at least 6 months before hopping on the bandwagon. By summer, we’ll have a better idea if Vero is here to stay, or just the latest flavor of the week. For more social media news, check out our weekly social media blog here.
