My Thoughts on VERO | The New Social Media Platform

Coined the new Instagram without the algorithms. Vero is the new social media platform that has peaked my curiosity of late.

First off, what is it?

Well it’s like Instagram, it allows you to upload images, links, locations, recommendations for books, films etc. Where it differs is the taxonomy of the posts on your news reel. Instagram introduced a rank feed 2 years ago which means you see popular posts first, on VERO it rhapsodises about the key differential. NO ADVERTS. No adverts mean no algorithms which allows you to see photos in reverse order from when they were posted.

The purists would claim this is social media; how God intended. Although I’d contest that God would love for you all to go back to the trees and try naming all the plants and animals. As Bill Hicks would once say, ‘the fact that we can’t name all the plants and animals on our planet suggests we left the garden (of Eden) too soon’.

What I like

I like the exclusive marketing ploy. If you are one of the first million subscribers you can use the platform for free, after that you have to pay. This has somewhat backfired as the supply has not met the demand, a welter of subscribers joining recently (current count of over 3 million) has melted their servers which are hampering the platforms performance. Complaints of glitch and unstable feeds. They have since binned the payment policy temporarily.

I’m curious. I have some friends who get seemingly brow beaten by the cornucopia of ‘faddish’ social media apps. You seem to master one and then a new one crops up and all of a sudden you’re back in that dreaded no man’s land of virtual uncertainty. You have to pack up your binary belongings and move out west like the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.

I like shiny new things and I’m naturally curious as to what could potentially be the next shiny new thing could be. An excellent article by Senior Influencer Manager at Socialyse Nik Speller, compounds this theory of people wanting curiosity.

‘Human curiosity is the ‘lifeblood’ of social networks - the reason for their existence, growth, and survival’.  – Nik Speller

I’m unsure about

The tiered system of connect and follow. It has a privacy setting with 3 levels. These varying degrees stipulate how well you know a person and how much you want the public to know about you. A neat idea for some. I know that some people don’t want their boss to view their INSTA stories because who wants their boss knowing they’re eating at The Dorchester on a Saturday night, right? Your boss will be seeing posts of you wolfing down caviar and tournedos, drinking the finest wines available to humanity all the while thinking, ‘hey asshole, at least have the verisimilitude that you’re under paid’.

For me, it’s just a bit awkward making that proclamation of how well you know someone and an unnecessary conversation to have.

The ethics. Apparently the Saudi billionaire that founded the company is being sued by the 30,000 disgruntled workers who certainly aren’t having conversations about which is the best hors d'oeuvre at The Dorchester around the water cooler.

Deletion is not great. I second the thoughts of Sara Tasker that if you’re not onboard with Vero, you can’t simply press the delete button. You have to jump through all the hoops, emailing and asking permission etc. At some point I fully expect General Gogol to arrive at my door with Dolph Lundgren over his shoulder. He’ll kindly remind me that nobody ever leaves the KGB before turning on heel and getting the first Aeroflot back to Moscow. (A View to a Kill anyone?)

Lastly

We shouldn’t forget that whilst everyone has mentioned MySpace being dead. It isn’t. OK so it might not be able to take on the monolith that is Kylie Jenner, if she tweets it’s all over for MySpace like she did with SnapChat earlier this week costing the company 1 billion in stocks, it won’t get off the canvass. But maybe, just maybe, Myspace could be something we all go back to once all the social media dust has settled and there is no more virtual terrain left to stick a flag in. It happened to vinyl. Come on hipsters, do your thing.