Vero: What is it? (Does it matter?)

Everybody's talking about Vero, the Instagram killer. Is it really? Let's take a look at it and figure out what you need to know about this new social network, guys. Welcome back, guys. I am Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire your clients online. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that subscribe button down there and the little bell next to it. You'll get a notification when my next video goes live. I put up videos Monday through Saturday helping you learn how to start a business, become an entrepreneur, and grow your presence online. Whether that's a brand, a product, or a service, I'm helping you learn how to grow. Today, guys, we are back at it looking at a new social media network, Vero. Some of you may have heard of this, some may not. There's some big names that have started talking about this. You see people like Gary Vee, Zack Schneider talking about it. Vero and a lot of the hype coming behind it. What is Vero? We're gonna take a look at that today, and the other thing that comes hand in hand with Vero is a lot of people are saying Vero is gonna be the Instagram killer. So not only are we gonna take a look at this new network, I'm gonna break it down for you, how it works, what it's about, what it does, but we're gonna go even further and we're gonna take a look at whether or not this network has the potential to shut down Instagram, to dethrone it from that mobile video photo quick app King position. Snapchat tried to battle with Instagram; they've died. They lost that battle pretty conclusively. Let's see if Vero's got what it takes to enter the ring and leave the champ. Let's go. Okay, guys. First up, let's take a look at the network itself. So Vero positions itself as an alternative to Instagram, but not just Instagram to mobile posting on the go. It claims to be. True social media. And what it means by that is it wants to equip you with the ability to share socially anything and everything that's going on. So, at first glance, it has a very familiar layout to Instagram. I'll show you guys here, it's a little bit dark. Man, that screen is smudgy. But it's very similar to Instagram in the layout. It's got likes, it's got a plus button, you know where to post. Very, very similar that way. You're able to import your contacts from your other social media networks. There is some functionality with that. It's not super streamlined yet, but that is there. What I really love so far about it is this: when you are sharing on Instagram, it's almost exclusively to Instagram, and it's a photo or video content only for Instagram. And what I mean by that is this: I can't import a YouTube video into my Instagram feed. I can create a story currently and put a link in as an up swipe on it, but you have to have a certain level of account to do that. This is a fresh account right out the gate. All I have to do is hit this plus button and immediately I've got the option to create photos, to upload video. I can put links here. I can put embedded links. I can put Vimeo videos, YouTube videos. I can let people know what I'm listening to directly from iTunes. So if you're a musician, this could be a great way to promote books that you're reading, places that you're at. This acts as a— it's like a Foursquare meets Spotify meets Instagram meets YouTube mobile. It's got a whole lot of pieces that are plugged in here at once, and the biggest thing that I'm loving about it is you don't need 10,000 followers to unlock that as a business, or you don't need to be a verified account to have that functionality. You get that functionality from go. Okay, so big, big thing here. It seems like just overall at a macro level, what this is offering out the gate is without you qualifying or being verified or having a massive network, you are able to engage and put out content, not just what you're creating, but what you're consuming online and sharing that with your audience. And I know this is a huge, huge issue that Instagram has had in the past where it's very locked down on how you can contribute and share links. For the most part, you're gonna see links changing in profiles every day and and people simply saying, click the link in the bio, click the link in the bio. This eliminates that. You don't need to alter your profile. You can leave your profile directly with your website link or whatever else you have. And it allows you to post those content-consuming things from the internet onto your feed without you constantly having to change links and tell people to click the link in the bio. So for someone like me who's got a YouTube platform, someone like me who has books on Amazon, if you have a podcast, anything of that nature, This is an extremely valuable network for you to be plugging into. It provides you that opportunity to engage with your network, put it out there, put it for everybody to see, and you're able to share what you're consuming as you go. So, I mean, first 2 posts I put out, here's my latest YouTube video, and I'm listening to Ed Sheeran because I had it on while I was taking a look at the network, right? Great way to share your iTunes stuff if you're a musician who's out there playing music. You can share what you're listening to, you can share your album from your latest iTunes, have people listen to it. If you've got a YouTube video, you put that out there. If you're writing a book, you can put that out there. It looks like it's a very, very powerful option to consider if you are a creator, okay? Even more so, a lot of people shy away from Instagram because they are not creators, because they are consumers, and this speaks to that network as well. It allows for you as a consumer to almost become a creator. You are able to go, here's what I'm consuming online, here's what I'm enjoying and my thoughts on it, And we'll put it in there. So, now what you've got is them taking something similar like Tumblr, where it's, here's what I'm consuming and my thoughts on it, and throwing that out there, along with, I'm also a content creator, I can put stuff out there. So, you've got a merging of Instagram and Tumblr and all of these beautiful social networks coming together as one, with no entry, it's free to use, free to sign up. I highly recommend it, guys. I'm not getting paid to promo this, I assure you. No. Uh, it's an amazing looking network from the get-go. Now it has over a million users right now. They've got an announcement on their page, over a million users. I highly recommend you at least take the time to take a look at it, get a feel for it, and see what's going on. But now let's take a step back, look and see, does this have the ability to crush Instagram? That's the big question. That's, that's what a lot of people are saying. A lot of people are struggling with. Let's take a look at this and figure out Can this in fact crush Instagram? Is it possible? Okay guys, this is directly from their website. This is what they're offering us as far as understanding why this is of value over Instagram and how they feel they're going to kill it. Okay, the way they're going to kill it is they're saying you have the ability to put buyable links, affiliate links, marketable links onto your page without qualifiers. They, they don't charge for that. There's nothing there. So if you are somebody who's big into affiliate marketing, you You do reviews, you do product reviews, you've got an affiliate network set up. This is of huge value, guys. This just slaughters Instagram as far as that goes. It monetizes the heck out of this, and it almost puts up a red flag for me because there is no charge. I'm wondering where they're making the money on this. And at first I thought, oh, it'll be ads-driven, it'll be ads-based. But no, they say there are no ads on Vero. There's no algorithms, no data mining for ad purposes. So I'm not sure currently how they're looking to monetize this platform, but what I do know is this: As of right now, they are allowing you to share content from all over the web, consuming all kinds of content. Say there's a video out there from Peter McKinnon where he's doing his latest review of the Canon M50, right? You can watch that video directly in your feed. You're consuming it, you put it on your feed, and then you put a link in— bam— to your affiliate for that camera. Now you're using Peter McKinnon's video to promote your affiliate link. It's looking like this is possible on this network, which is a massive step up over top of what Instagram is offering. So really, guys, no ad placement, you've got no data mining, you've got some security, you've got engagement where people are able to buy things directly from your page. These are some major, major right hooks, I guess, if we're talking about it in the context of it battling Instagram. These look like big right hooks, but I'm gonna give you a cautionary tale here. Once upon a time, there was a thing called Snapchat. Most of you remember it. Snapchat had a lot of innovation, a lot of great new features. It thought it could be a contender to Instagram and possibly dethrone it from what it was currently doing. Unfortunately, the reality was this: Snapchat didn't have a long-term plan and vision to continue evolving, growing, and adapting to the market, and they didn't have a user base that was committed enough to say, well, we are committed to you over another network. In the battle between Vero and Instagram, it is still that same issue. There's nothing that Vero has done here that is so significant that with a few weeks of coding, Instagram couldn't incorporate some of these perks and twists, right? The ability to post links or post other things that you're consuming, bringing a more Tumblr environment into Instagram, is not outside of the realm of possibility, especially if Instagram notices that there is some sizable success in Vero through that offering. So is this an exclusive technology of our coding or offering from Vero that Instagram cannot duplicate and then optimize into their own channels? Unfortunately, Instagram has been quick to move. When they see a competitor, they see what it is that they're offering, and they bring that into their platform. Now, one of the big ones here that I see dividing the two is going to be the ads. There's no way Zuckerberg is giving up the ads from Instagram. I'm not sure again how Veero is able to function without ad revenue, but for now it's a free account. It says that it's gonna be free. It says that you can create content, distribute content, and there's no cost. It's not mine to reason how they can do this without ad revenue, where the profitability comes from, but I am aware that currently if I had to put those 2 side by side, Instagram Instagram is not gonna remove their ad offerings. It's not gonna happen. It's gonna be there. So Vero does have that potential. Now, if we look at functionality, I give it to Vero. Vero takes the win, okay? If I look at the ability to adapt and move quickly to changes in the social media marketplace, Instagram's gonna take the win on that. They've proven in the past that they're able to adapt quickly, innovate, bring in new concepts, adapt them to their own purposes, and give them to their community. I'm gonna give Instagram the win on that. This is a smaller team with a smaller community. I don't think, especially without ad revenue, I don't see that they have the resources to go toe-to-toe with something as big as Instagram. So functionality, Vero. Do they have the ability to compete long-term? I'm gonna give that to Instagram. Overall, who do I give this to? In reality, guys, I think it's worth it now for you to go on, play around with Vero. It's not gonna hurt. I think there's definitely some opportunity on the network, but people going out and calling Vero the Instagram killer, I'm gonna say it's way too early to call that. If I had to call it long-term, my call on this would be Instagram wins it, but it'll be in the 12th round, okay? And what I mean by that is this: currently Vero has the better offering. It does. Even though it's got a smaller user base, that user base is growing massively day by day by day, and Instagram has kind of reached that, that that threshold unless things start to change up a little bit. So currently as it exists, Vero would win, but the fight isn't won in a single day. Instagram is willing to put the time in, make the long-term effort, and grow. We've seen that in the past. So if I had to make a call, does Vero crush Instagram? My call is not bloody likely. Instagram will adapt, evolve, and bring what they see of value from this network into their own and eliminate the competition much like they did with Snapchat. Now, Do I think that Vero will absolutely disappear much the way Snapchat has? No. I think the ability to post links, video, what you're consuming— as most of the internet is not a content creator, they are content consumers— this network is better built to suit their needs. The ability to share effectively your cons— the content you're consuming online is something that is just so, so valuable. So Do I recommend this for businesses, guys? Yes. Get on there today. Get on there. Open up a channel. I'll put a link down in the comments below. You can check out Vero. Question of the day is, guys, I want to know, what do you think about Vero? Go in, play with it. Let me know what you think. Do you think it has the ability to crush Instagram, or will Instagram still be king? Let me know what you think down below. I'll catch you guys tomorrow with another great video. Thanks for watching. Let's go.