You may have heard about a brand new social media network called Vero. You may have seen a lot of people jumping on the Vero bandwagon these last few days in particular, and also others expressing concern over the network and its owners. At Social Bods we’re totally on top of all new social media developments. We can’t and won’t always put our knowledge into action, often for good reason. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, especially when you’re trying to balance the budgets of clients.
Here’s what Vero is, and why we are sitting on the fence for this one, at least for the time being.
What is Vero?
Vero is a new social network that’s actually been around a couple of years. It’s said to be better than Facebook and Instagram in that it doesn’t have advertising, or have an algorithm to battle – you should see everything you want to see from whoever you choose to follow or connect with without paid-for adverts diminishing your user experience.
You can learn more about it at http://bbc.in/2F6tIQu
Why now?
To support the network, Vero will be (allegedly) charging for use through a subscription charge. They’ve recently announced that the first million users can register for free, hence why lots of people are rushing to snap up their usernames before they become unavailable and before they have to pay to use the network.
So why are you not jumping on the bandwagon?
There are lots of reasons why we are hanging back from getting ourselves and our clients onto the latest network. While we may regret this decision, we don’t mind a bit of fence sitting from time to time.
- We don’t believe that a social network which charges users can be sustainable in the long term. Maybe Vero can prove us wrong. But we do think there is a limit to who is willing to pay to use a social media network. To us, Facebook has it right in encouraging users on board and then charging brands for access to them. We’re not sure that individuals will have reason to be OK with paying. It may be that the 1 million people they are granting free access to right now will be the total sum of users this time next year. Maybe not, but we’re happy to sit it out and see.
- There are questions over the ownership of the network. This doesn’t put us off completely – after all, being owned by Russians is not a bad thing in itself, and it’s not like all other businesses in the world are squeaky clean either, but this is certainly an unknown to mainstream brands and if it does turn out they are as dodgy as some online commentators are alleging, then we don’t want to have associated our clients with them. On the other side, the attacks aimed at the ownership may be completely unfounded. But we’re happy to make our clients wait and see.
- There are teething problems. Well yes, all new tech has teething problems in the beginning. And all social media networks are a work in progress. However, to spend time getting our head around something when it’s not behaving properly is madness. This will sort itself in time probably. So time is what we’ll give it.
- And because we just don’t have the time budget to get all clients maxing it out on all social networks available. We’ll continue to put their resources where we see fit, whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or something else. To try out a new network on their time, and see it come to nothing, is irresponsible on our part. We put our time and energy where we know we can get returns from our clients. If a client wants to try out Vero, we’re happy to shift resources around, or to do extra for them budget permitting, but we certainly won’t be making that call on their behalf.
- And finally because “wait and see” is, in our experience, a good a business tactic as any.
Now if Vero takes off and it becomes the next ‘must have’ network, then we will certainly recommend our clients consider having a presence, but for now, at least, wait and see is our approach.
Have you jumped on the Vero bandwagon yet? What do you think?
