Vero App – A Rising Star

Semi-New Social Media Platform

Vero is an app that has big aspirations. It was founded by a Lebanese billionaire and a movie financier, and their plan is to take on the big social media giants. [caption id="attachment_5340" align="alignright" width="300"] geralt / Pixabay[/caption] It was conceived because of users increasing annoyance with ads and controlling algorithms being enforced on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Launched in 2015, Vero asserts itself as an ad-free "social network that lets you be yourself."

What's The Attraction

As recently as one week ago, it wasn't showing up in the top apps. However, over the weekend, its popularity exploded. This post explains more:

The company's manifesto says: 'Most social networks reduce everyone to a friend or a follower.

'This encourages us to only share the parts of our lives we think are the most interesting.'

The biggest difference between Vero and other networks is the fact that the items on Vero users' feeds show up in chronological order.

Additionally, Vero charges fees for users unlike social media giants Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

Read more here:  What Is Vero?

The Vero App is new enough that it is still experiencing glitches. Ironically, it isn't really all that new, but it has had such recent influx of users, including artists and celebrities, that the servers are having trouble keeping up. Some people complain that it isn't very easy to navigate and that it crashes, forcing you to restart the app. Some feel that requiring a phone number in a beta app is too intrusive. I was able to download the app, although many people have hit a wall when trying. It asked a lot of questions about preferences, but when I finally got to the point where I could post something, it timed out.

How To Use Vero

This video gives more information on using the Vero App: The first 1 million people to sign up for Vero are given lifetime free access, so I guess I made it into that elite group. Once it has reached its limit on free users, the annual subscription cost is expected to be fairly reasonable...but at this point, no one knows how much. Vero is committed to a "no ads" philosophy, so the funding is going to have to come from a different source. The biggest attraction is that there is no algorithm filtering your posts.

Finding Friends and Connecting

You can let the app look for people you know that already use the platform or you can search for people randomly. It lets you follow people and connect with people, the first being from a distance and the second more intimate. Here is more about connecting with others on this new social media platform:

First up, you'll need to find some friends to share your posts with. Thankfully, the app does that automatically when you first sign in – looking through your contacts list and finding people that you might know. [caption id="attachment_5341" align="alignright" width="300"] stevepb / Pixabay[/caption] So you can get to adding those. The app will ask you how you know those people – whether they're just an acquaintance or a close friend – and you should click on the circles that apply. This is important because Vero works something like the way Google+ was supposed to, arranging people into different groups and then allowing you to share more or less with each of them. Not everybody needs to be your friend. If you just want to follow someone – if they're famous, for instance, or an artist you admire but just want to be kept up to date with rather than befriend – you should only click the "follow" button and not the "connect" one, so that you'll stay up to date with all of their posts. Find the original post here:  Vero: How to Use the New App that Combines Instagram, Facebook, and More

As I mentioned, I tried to make my first post and it failed...three times. I was finally able to share my first music post, but not without some extra effort. It may be a while before Vero becomes a Facebook killer, but it seems the world is tiring of the mainstream platforms that want complete control.  

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