Vero: What It Tells Us About Social Media
It’s time for something different.
Data mining and digital ad spending are completely out of control. The average American sees 4,000–10,000 ads per day. In 2019, worldwide digital ad spending rose by 17.6% with a grand total $333 billion. To put this in perspective, $333 billion is an amount greater than the GDPs of 177 different countries.
Every day, the privacy of average people is sacrificed to fuel the lucrative digital ad industry. The chief exploiter of user privacy is social media companies. Many of the major platforms track your habits, psychological health, and your relationships so that they can show you targeted ads. Social media users are becoming increasingly dissatisfied.
In 2015, Ayman Hariri launched Vero. Vero’s creators basically admitted that the platform was the exact same thing as Facebook and Instagram with one exception: it didn’t mine user data or show people advertisements. Instead, users were asked to pay $10 a year in subscription fees. While Vero ultimately failed, its rise and fall can teach us important lessons about the current social media market.
How Did Vero Grow?
Even though Vero charged a $10 subscription fee for most users, it gave the first 1 million users free access to the platform for life. In March of 2018 Vero surged in popularity. Over one weekend, it garnered 3 million users and made headlines as the new app to take on Facebook.
Here’s the fascinating part: Vero didn’t really introduce new functionality. Vero’s feed organized posts in chronological order and users could create separate classes of friends/media interests, but other than that, Vero was essentially the same thing as Facebook and Instagram. In many ways, its functionality was actually less robust than other platforms since it was just a news feed with profiles. Even today, Vero has not introduced any new features for the existing user base.
Why Did It Fail?
Vero failed on the Monday following its weekend surge in popularity. It was revealed that CEO Ayman Hariri previously served in leadership at “Saudi Oger,” a company that left workers unpaid and stranded in tight living quarters with limited food, water, and medicine. There were also concerns that Vero had ties to Russia, which has an incredibly shady track record on social media. #DeleteVero went viral and ever since then, Vero’s been a ghost of a platform.
What Does Vero’s Story Tell Us?
Vero’s acquisition of 3 million users in one weekend is nothing short of a miracle. Vero marketed itself as the exact same thing as Facebook or Instagram with the exception of being private and ad-free. Vero’s single, distinctive attribute enabled it to gain so many users. That fact suggests that consumers do value their privacy. Additionally, many consumers valued it enough to pay a $10 subscription fee in order to have access to Vero. Vero ultimately failed because the ethics of using it were questioned, not because Vero charged a fee.
Consumers do value their privacy.
Imagine if there was a quality platform that respected privacy, was free, and didn’t have a shady history? Stop imagining because the platform exists. It’s called The Jump. And just as a cherry on top, instead of charging users a $10 subscription fee, The Jump gives users the opportunity to foster communication, have access to multiple tools, control their own feeds and so much more — all for free. Maybe it’s time to make the jump. Pun intended.
