There’s a new kid on the block, you may have already heard of it, or even have an account… it’s called Vero and it’s being called the new Instagram. But what is it? Oh, and more importantly, should your business be on it?
The Vero website explains the new social network here:
“Vero makes sharing online more like real life. That means naturally choosing which posts get seen by who – whether it’s a photo, a song, a book or movie recommendation, a cool restaurant or a great article.”[vc_column width=”1/2″]Look at all the lovely things Vero promises in their promo video, sounds ideal eh?
Plus more other cool stuff we haven’t discovered yet…[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/LdJ-wl0l-Hk” align=”center”]So what’s not to love? Better get over and create an account for you AND your business eh?
Hold fire… remember Ello? No? You’re not alone. There have been social platforms like Vero before, young idealists that create an advert free social platform that is truly social… but as great as they are forr a few weeks or even months, they inevitably die. Why you ask? Because tehy’re victims of their own creation. Because they’re so good, they grow exponentially. They get too big too quickly and can’t cope – because they don’t make enough money to deal with the growth that comes with success.
They don’t have enough money to cope because they don’t do advertising.[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column width=”1/2″]Not doing advertising means that Vero have adopted a subscription model – meaning that after 1 million people have signed up, anybody else that signs up will have to pay a “small annual fee” to remain on the platform. Vero explains this choice by explaining…
“As a subscription-based service, our users are our customers, not the product we sell to advertisers. Our subscription model will allow us to keep Vero advertising-free, and to focus solely on delivering the best social experience instead of trying to find new ways to monetise our users’ behaviour or tricking them back into the app with notifications.”As great as that is, they’re already having problems with downtime because they simply cannot cope with the level of traffic and new sign ups. Meaning that even if you do want to sign up, you may have trouble.
The next thing to remember is that Facebook owns this marketplace. Do the owners of Vero really think that they’re going to be able to compete with Facebook owned Instagram without the huge income gained from advertising? Unfortunately for personal users or Facebook and Instagram, advertising is a neccessary evil to enable such slick and high performing platforms.
It’s also worth considering that there is absolutely NOTHING stopping Facebook from integrating a lot of the cool features from Vero into Instagram. The ability to upload songs, links, places etc would all be welcomed by the majority of users, just like the ability to add Snapchat style filters was a few months ago. Speaking of which… Remember when Snapchat was the next big thing? Add adverts in to that platform and give Instagram face filters and Snapchat has now found itself dying a slow death.Now we’re not saying that Facebook’s monopoly of the social network sector is a good thing, far from it… however there’s little that can be done to fight it at this stage, so we wouldn’t recommend rushing to set up a Vero account for your business. The best we can hope for is that Vero and other social platforms teach Facebook and Co a lesson in what people want, which will then in turn mean that both advertisers and consumers alike get a better experience using those platforms.
Interested in how you can make the most out of social media for your business? Give the superheroes a call on 01902 32 66 44