How Vers Works/ How To Use It
Vers Me, Vers The World
So at first, using the app might seem confusing. At the time of this Medium post there is no onboarding yet for the app to guid users through the functionality of the app. I’ll explain everything you guys need to know on how to use the app, from the registration to voting on a video, to sending and receiving a Vers. There are some improvements that the app will need, but for right now this will have to do in the beginning. This introduction to Vers will be brief and only cover the main functionalities.
What’s the point of Vers?
The purpose of the app is to encourage people to be more engaging and interactive on social media in the most visual way possible and that’s through video. Social media is all about sharing and although you can create content it doesn’t necessarily encourage it as much as it should. I wanted to come up with a way to give people a reason to take out their camera phones and record something, to create something. I didn’t just want to encourage people to produce content, but to get their friends and family involved as well. The goal is for people to create moments and invite others to be a part of those moments.
This is where the competitive nature of app comes in. Social media is filled with challenges and when a challenge goes viral you get a movement going. People all over posting their videos and sharing what they created. So with Vers I wanted to implement that. I could go on about this and the back story on how I came up with the idea, but to keep it short here’s why I made it. I’m tired of seeing people glued to their phones. People at concerts with their phones out literally watching the entire concert through a little screen. Tired of seeing kids at the food court at the mall all on their phones instead of socializing with each other. Social media is boring and I’m trying to change that.
Creating an Account
If you already have an account and can login skip this part and head to the Home Screen section.
So when the app first comes up you’ll be greeted with a welcome screen before the login screen appears. I’ll skip through the obvious things like the login and get into where most people got stuck on during the beta and even when it launched
The sign up is very simple and easy and can found at the bottom of the login button. Above the signup screen where it’s cut off is where you can choose your profile picture. This can be from your camera roll or your camera. Representing location is meant to show others what city you rep. This will make sense in a future feature I have planned and I know, I should’ve made it so you can select where your from rather than typing it. Kinda like a drop down menu list instead of typing. That’ll be fixed later on.
When you hit signup a confirmation email will be sent for you to confirm your account. This is where people got stuck at. The confirmation email won’t have a picture and sometimes won’t make it into your inbox. Check your spam or junk inbox and you should find it. It’s kinda tricky to notice it and you probably scrolled passed it a few times. I forgot what the issue was, but I think it had something to do with Amazon Web Services (AWS) not verifying the email. This issue will be resolved in the future, but believe me when I say that the email is in there.
Home screen
Now for the fun part. Welcome to Vers! If your not following anyone this screen will be blank. Here you can see two people currently in what I call a Vers. To simply put it a, Vers is just when two people are battling each other in whatever the challenge may be.
This will be the first screen you see when signing up or logining. You can find all the challenges happening between you and your friends here. At the bottom is a view count and how many people voted. When you tap to view the challenges both videos will play one after the other and a voting screen will appear for you to choose who you think won. You don’t know which person people voted on and who’s winning. Even after a winner is decided you won’t know how many votes the person won by. I wanted to keep the app as friendly as possible and not discourage anyone from sending more challenges. You will know who voted on the challenge, but that’s about it. Above is the time the voting is still live. Voting goes for 24 hours and then a winner is decided. After that, both videos will disappear from viewing in the next 24 hours making it a total of 48 hours the videos were up. An arrow will point to the winner at the end and if there’s a draw an equal sign will appear.
“So it’s like Snapchat?” *Facepalm* That’s honestly the only thing I borrowed from Snapchat, but it doesn’t make it another Snapchat.
Discovery Screen
Here you have the discovery screen. When you send a Vers you have the option to make it public or private. Private will only make it visible to your followers on the Home Screen and public will post it on both screens. It’s very similar to the Home Screen except you can see the thumbnail of the video. At the top of this screen you will see an empty space. That’s where the top ten users with the highest streaks will appear.
“What’s a streak?”
Okay, I borrowed one more thing from Snapchat. When you win three challenges in a row you’ll have a streak going. A fire emblem will appear on your profile and if your one of the top ten users with the highest streak, it’ll appear at the top of the Discovery Screen. It’ll look like Instagram’s Story at the top with users profiles appearing and the amount of streaks they have. In order to appear in the top ten your profile has to be public.The plus sign at the bottom right of the screen is where you can add other users and find your friends.
Okay, I’m gonna skip through some parts and get into how sending a Vers works and the inbox. This is where it matters. I’ll try my best to explain how this works, but I’m sure after reading this you’ll have a better understanding of how to use the app.
This is what you’ll see on your camera.
- Flash icon to, you guessed it, turn on the flash on your phone.
- Below that is the option to switch between the front facing and rear facing camera.
- The clock icon is to set a ten or three second count down for the camera to start recording and to set a 30 second record length. The limit is a minute, but videos have to be at least 3 seconds long.
- Last icon is to save the video to your camera roll. When you hit it you won’t be able to tell, but trust me it’s there.
- Lastly, the record button is at the bottom and the left of that is how you preview your recorded video. When you like what you have, hit the arrow at the top left to continue sending your challenge. The X button will close out of the camera.
Sorry if the images are too big, still don’t know how to resize them on Medium or if you even can. Kinda new to this.
After selecting the arrow button you’ll see the screen on the left. Here you select a recipient you want to send your challenge to. There’s one weird thing though. The app will list everyone on the app with an account. Don’t worry we’ll fix that soon. Just use the search to find the person you want to send it to. After that hit Send Vers at the bottom. You’ll then get a screen on the left where you describe your challenge. At the bottom is the option to make it public or private. Private will make it visible to only people following you and public will post the challenge to the discovery and for your followers to see.
I Just Sent a Vers. What Now?
The person on the other end will be notified that a challenge was sent to them. You can view all the videos you sent and received through the Versus inbox. You can find this by hitting the menu burger on the top left of the screen. Below are three images of the inbox that are showing videos that you sent out.
Here’s what your looking at…
Here are images of the inbox that shows the video challenges you sent out to people.
- Expired: you have three days to respond to a challenge (when it’s in the receiving inbox) and if the person doesn’t respond it will appear as shown on the far left. You can change the recipient or drop the challenge. You can’t resend it to the same person. When it’s expired it will disappear from the other person’s receiving inbox.
- Pending: This just means that a challenge is waiting for a response and if three days are up it will expire. Challenges that are responded to will be located in the receiving on the left.
- Veto: This is where I had to put in more thought. I didn't want people doing challenges that were irrelevant or harmful material so I placed the option to veto someone’s video. When the sender vetos your video you can either try the challenge again or just decline it. Now I thought what if someone vetos because I did the challenge better? Honestly, I’ll just have to trust the users won’t be petty about it.
- Decline: You won’t see it in the images below, but the one after these you can see it in the background. If a challenge is declined you can change the recipient or drop the challenge all together. You can also view your video that was vetoed.
Receiving Inbox
This is where you’ll see challenges sent to you and ones that people replied to.
You still with me? Hopefully things aren’t too confusing and you have a general idea on how to go about using the app. On the left you can see that my friend Dom has sent me a video challenge. The video was sent ten minutes ago with the video challenge titled Vers. When you press on the sent challenge the video will start playng.
After the video plays there will be three options.
- Accepting the challenge will bring you to the camera to respond with your video. You can close out of the camera and respond later if you want. After it’s sent your just waiting for the other person to post it or veto it if they deem it inappropriate or irrelevant. I forgot what happens if they don’t post in three days.
- Declining will reject the challenge and the other person can drop the challenge or change recipients.
- You can close out of the video, but remember that you have three days to respond or it’s just like declining it. I think the same happens if they don’t respond to an accepted challenge like posting it.
JuneBug VS FILAAY
For example …
Below are two videos of people I follow on Instagram dancing to a remix of a song called Love Cone Down. It was a challenge that went pretty viral during the time I came up with Vers. So let’s just say that Filaay (top video) decided to perform the challenge and send it to a friend. He would send it to JuneBug (bottom Video), he goes by @junelite now, and if he chooses to accept he would record his own video. Once June is done recording his video he sends it back to Filaay for viewing. Then Filaay can post the challenge and people can now vote on which video they think won.
Trust The Process
The app is in its early infancy and will see improvements through out its time. My goal is to build a community of creators and change the way we use our camera phones to interact with each other. So hopefully you’ll stick around and see how far the project goes. If you encounter any bugs or issues with the app use the feed back feature on the app located at the bottom of the menu or email verstheworld@gmail.com
Vers will be available for Android next month at the time of this Medium post and the UI/UX is very similar. Basically the same actually .
Hopefully I covered just about all the important stuff and that this helps you better understand how Vers works. If you follow Vers on Instagram you probably noticed a lot of dancing videos. That’s because originally it was just for dancers, but you don’t have to dance in your videos. Have fun with it, more things to come in the future.
Vers me!
