Vero True Social is a new social network to share pictures and other medias. Find out if it’s worth trying it and how it works.
If you often use social networks, in recent weeks you will have noticed that many influencers and regular users have posted photos about a new social network called Vero True Social. Just to be precise True is not a new social network. It was created in 2015 that in the real world is not long ago but on the Internet is quite a long time.
So what happened in the past few weeks? Why did Vero go viral passing from being buried by more than 1500 other social apps on the Apple store to becoming the most downloaded app?
There are probably several reasons. I think that one of them is a very aggressive marketing campaign. It is not by chance that many influencers have posted about Vero all at the same time, especially given the fact that it has been around for quite sometime. This encouraged a lot of people to download the app, tagging their pictures on Instagram with #vero and #verosocial causing even more people to join it.
What is obvious, however, is that this app is successful, at least for now, because it satisfies an urgent need for those who use social medias: maintain the control over their feed, keeping it in chronological order. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have in fact an algorithm that presents posts NOT in chronological order but based on various factors including engagement of the followers. The point is that users do not like this system. There is no need for a new social network that allows you to share photos or videos or other material but there is a need for a social network to allow users to regain control over their feeds and Vero, promises to do this.
Many think that the sudden popularity of the App was a surprise also for the developers since as soon as it went viral, and people started downloading it, Vero has had a lot of bugs and it has been very slow. The situation is getting a bit better now but the App it’s still slow compared to Instagram. Unfortunately this is a problem because new users will delete the app as soon as they see that it’s not working well. Hopefully the bugs will be fixed asap.
Vero was founded by the Lebanese billionaire Ayman Harir whose assets have been estimated at $ 1.3 billion by the magazine Forbes
In addition to the idea of bringing the feed back in chronological order, the creators of True have promised to not allow advertising. How, however, will they be able to finance the development of the App and maintain the infrastructure to keep everything running? The idea is to have the users pay a small fee each year. In theory, the first million users would not have had to pay anything, but now that this threshold has been exceeded they have said that for the moment the App will still be free. I believe that this is a marketing strategy to avoid stopping the wave of downloads.
This being said, I personally prefer to pay a small annual fee rather than seeing things that I don’t like on my feed. We will have to wait and see if they will keep the word or they will do what Whatsapp did in the past (aka not keeping their promises).
Another selling point for Vero is that they promise not to share our data with other companies, or in other words, not to earn money by selling our information to others. Hopefully they will keep their word also in this regard.
How to use Vero
Joining Vero is very simple, unless you have to deal with some bugs. Once registered you can start to complete your bio and start following people. Here you can see the first difference between Instagram and Vero. On Vero, you can categorize your followers into four different categories:
- Close friends
- Friends
- Acquaintances
- Followers
The concept is similar to Facebook lists but less complicated and every time you share something you can choose who can see the post without letting your followers know if they are included or not in the list. I imagine that not too distant in the future Instagram will also introduce something similar.
In addition to photos you can share: link, music, movies, books, places and you can also share other users’ profiles to recommend them to your followers (if Vero will become really popular I imagine that this last option will be a money making machine for influencers).
What is missing, for now, are Stories and the streaming.
Another way in which Vero hopes to monetize is by keeping some commissions when its users will sell products directly from the APP. The idea is not bad, but it remains to be seen how users will take it when they will have to pay to sign up and sell their products.
Conclusioni
Vero has entered a very difficult market in which Instagram/Facebook have virtually no competitors. Needless to say THERE IS a need for change.
What is not clear is how sustainable can be a business model in which advertising is completely absent and in which users, who are not used to doing so, will have to pay to use the social. The next few months will be crucial to see if Vero will be a new success story or not.
Last thing to say about Vero is that right now is not censored in China yet, but there is no doubt that it will be if the app becomes popular.
Here you’ll find an article about Mass Planner and its alternatives to automate actions on all social media (you can try this APP for free for a while).
And what about you? Have you ever heard of Vero? Do you use it and if yes, do you like it? Leave your profile name in the comments. If you would like to follow me you can look for my name:
Fabio Nodari. Here I talk about the fraud Instagram influencers.
Here you can read my review of Firework app a new social network to share 30 secs videos.
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