Casey Neistat’s Beme Strategy.
If you’re a follower of Casey Neistat, then you’ll be very familiar with his Social Media app “Beme”. For those of you who are thinking “What the hell is Beme??”, Beme is an alternative to Snapchat. Since it’s release in July, it has been gaining more and more followers. But since it was released I’ve had one question to mind “Why would Casey Neistat create an app that already exists?” :| . Last night, I was walking to my car with my friends after a standard sobering night out. It was at this moment that it made absolute sense to me and I shouted “HOLY SHIT!”. Before, creation of the app made no sense to me, but now it does. [Casey, if you’re reading this and didn’t have this plan in mind but now decided to pursue it, I want a cut from your profits. Thanks! :) ].
Let’s rewind to summer 2014. Casey Neistat, a filmmaker from New York City stormed the Snapchat scene with his addictive stories, he used the app almost on a daily basis . He even created a Youtube channel dedicated to his Snapchat Stories. Then came October, where he posted a short film about Snapchat (available on his Youtube Channel).
As explained in his video, Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $10 billion, and it’s obvious why, no Social Media platform has quite figured out Video for mobile until Snapchat introduced their “Stories” feature. From then on it kicked up a storm and has become one of the popular apps to rank with Instagram and Facebook. The app is an important tool for creatives and businesses to create and share stories quickly and easily.
So what does this have to do with Casey’s Beme? The moment Casey posted his Youtube video about Snapchat, I started to see less and less of his Snpachat Stories. Through out 2015 he mentions a few times on Snapchat that he’s created a company and he can’t announce it yet. He does this a few times until March 26th, where he shared on Snapchat that he’s posted a new video on Youtube with a ‘BIG ANNOUCNMENT”, spurring the imagination of his fans to thinking that he’ll finally announce his company. Nope, completely wrong. Casey announces that he’ll begin to make daily vlogs.
“I wanna make more movies, but there’s so much going on in my life it makes it tough. So I’ve decided, starting today, on my 34th birthday, I’m going to make a movie everyday. For a while anyway, until I get bored.” — Casey Neistat
Just like his Snapchat Stories, his Youtube videos are highly addictive. You want MORE. He’s an interesting guy and is the type of person you’d want your kids to watch on Youtube instead of Minecraft. Throughout his vlogs he’s teasing the audience for about roughly 2 months until he finally announces his company, Beme. July 17th’s vlog post was the day I asked myself “Why would Casey Neistat create an app that already exists?”.
The creation of the app made no sense to me, but now it does. You don’t grab the guy who worked at Tumblr (Matt Hackett, who is CTO and Cofounder of Beme), and the likes of Karlie Kloss amongst other investors to back your company with $2.6 million for nothing. Looking back and now connecting the dots, I can see how the plan could unfold…
So where does the “HOLY SHIT!” moment come in to play? Remember Casey’s “Snapchat murders Facebook” video? At that moment of filming Snapchat was worth around $10 billion, in a space of a year, that value has increased to $16 billion and growing. They’ve declined Facebook’s offer to set a trend of their own. That was until Casey decided to get in on the action. With quick thinking and being smart about it, Casey has created an alternative app that provides most of the same features that Snapchat offers. These are the same features that also attracted Facebook to provide Snapchat with an offer. If Casey decides to sell Beme to Facebook, with over a years worth of hard work, he’d become a billionaire.
When Casey began vlogging in March, he had just over 250,000 Youtube subscribers. As off November 8th 2015, he has over 1.4 million. That’s an unprecedented figure! He’s currently in a strong position to make some serious money for his company.
I like both apps, but I use Snapchat more than Beme. Right now, Beme is a real threat to Snapchat’s future. Snapchat gained $1.2 billion in funding and recently announced their strategy to make money, which I can’t see it being that effective to cover their past expenditure. If Facebook ever offers Beme that $billion cheque, then it’s bad news for Snapchat, Casey will finally be able to cover Owen’s College fees, and I would have become the oracle of the internet age. Let’s be real, Casey’s Youtube channel has gained 1.2 million subscribers since March, it took him almost 5 years to hit 250k subscribers. Beme isn’t leaving our sights anytime soon.
