“What’s Vero?!” yelled Chris from the other room yesterday. NFI. At first I thought he was throwing new teen lingo at me that I wasn’t aware of – cementing my accelerated transition into a dowdy, uncool mom (I’m panicking as I write this). “It’s a new app that everyone’s talking about” he said and my immediate thought was – oh god, another one. Another app to add to my cluttered iPhone homepage. As if Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and Pinterest weren’t enough for us to juggle. Despite this, being the curious George (or Georgina) that I am and capitulating to the FOMO I was feeling; I downloaded the app, jumped on Google and typed in ‘what is vero?’ to see what all the fuss was about.
After a few hours of reading and mucking around on the app here is what I’ve gathered so far from the app that everyone is claiming to be the new Instagram before all the controversial algorithm changes. It’s a platform that shares posts chronologically (which seems like a distant memory now); Vero has boasted that users will see all posts in chronological order and ad-free.
“We don’t curate it, manipulate it, insert advertising in it, or hold back posts. You see what has been shared with you, when it’s been shared with you.”
You still have the options to write captions, tag places, include hashtags as well as edit your photos as you would with Instagram. So how is Vero different and why should we give it any attention from our already chaotic social media landscape?
What is Vero?
Key Features
– Posts are shared chronologically and in real time
– Subscription based – free lifetime subscription for the first million users and a small fee will be charged thereafter. The fee has not been confirmed but an idea provided from the creators is that it amounts to a few cups of coffee
– No ads policy
– Primarily an image sharing platform but also allows users to add movies, tv shows, music, books and places to their feed
– Users have the option to choose who they share their post with under the tier structure in place – close friends, friends, acquaintances or followers. Don’t worry – people can’t see their classifications, so no bridges will be burnt as a result
– Hashtags work the same on this platform
– Links are available to businesses but they will need to pay for ‘buy now’ links and Vero will take a small percentage commission if the click results in a sale
My first impressions after downloading the app are that whilst the design is sleek and clean – it’s a little too dark for my taste and almost reminds me of Spotify for some reason. I read that the platform experienced technical difficulties from the surges of users flocking to it and I have definitely experienced some of these issues already. I received notifications about people following me but can’t see any of this when I actually have the app open. One can only hope that this is temporary because we’re all such fickle users these days and one incident like this can change the sentiment instantly if people find the app frustrating to use.
What I’m most interested in is that the feed is now chronological again and boy have I missed this feature. Despite the constant protests of millions of users around the world – Facebook and Instagram don’t seem to be changing their plans any time soon so it’ll be interesting to see if Vero actually takes off. Perhaps we just need Kylie Jenner to tweet the request of returning chronological feeds – haha!
Have you tried Vero yet? What are your thoughts?
Check out my photo editing tips here if you want to know how to up your photography game!
