“Vero”, meaning truth in Esperanto language, experienced a huge popularity last week, where it became the highest ranked social application on both the Google Play and Apple App stores.
Vero’s escalating success was even a surprise to its company. This has made the company face issues, where it confessed on its Twitter account that it was facing a hard time dealing with the outstanding number of new users, which lead to technical problems.
Even though it resembles Instagram in many features and functions, it has its own special features that may have contributed to its success. Have a look at its key features.
Advertising Free
Unlike Facebook and other apps, Vero’s platform is advertisement free, which mean higher privacy for users, were their data would not be collected and sold to third parties for an exchange of ad revenue.
The application, brought to light in 2015, is backed up by Ayman Al- Hariri (co-founder and CEO), a Lebanese billionaire, and the son of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafic Al-Hariri.
Hariri told the CBC that he founded the app because he was frustrated at the workings of current social media applications.
When being interviewed by CBC, Hariri claimed that the “no-add policy” allows the company to look at users as their customers, rather than advertisers.
No Algorithm
This application doesn’t use any algorithm to prioritise the content in the feed, the thing which users of Instagram, complain of. This implies that people can’t pay money to boost posts, as they do on other platforms, since posts only appear in chronological order.
Subscription Model
The company will charge a small annual fee, while offering a free service to its first 1 million subscribers. As Vero Claims, this small fee means that it wouldn’t have to rely on advertisers.
Friends vs. Followers
The application differentiates between friends and followers. Users can choose to have either one or both after starting the profile. Friends are also grouped into three categories where one can choose from “close friends, friends, and acquaintances”.
A view of the application
While remaining unclear whether the Vero app will kill off social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in the future, the real challenge for Vero currently is to maintain its popularity and convert the current spike of success into a continuous one of daily active users.
In addition to the fact that it will eventually charge users, the one major issue people have been facing is that, due to the sudden surge in popularity, they are experiencing a great deal of technical difficulties. Issues with signing up and the speed of the app itself have proved a major problem as word spread about the service online. Others have also pointed out issues around content copyright ownership in the company’s terms and conditions although these have since been updated.
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