In the last few weeks, I have seen more and more wildlife photographers I follow sharing on their Instagram stories they started a new account on VERO. So I decided to have a look and try to understand what was going on. Is really everyone in our field abandoning Instagram for VERO?
VERO markets itself as a social network free from advertisements, data mining and algorithms. The app has been around since 2015 but, during the past few years, it failed reaching popularity.
Why this sudden surge in popularity?
Many people are in huge disagreement with Instagram latest changes and updates. You might be familiar with the online petition “Make Instagram Instagram again”. About one year ago, Adam Mosseri (head of Instagram) announced that Instagram was no longer a ‘’square photo-sharing app’’ – and he used a Video for that of course. Since then, the general discontent has been growing day after day. In the past year, we have seen the steady rise of Reels (currently the only video format available on Instagram) and a shift in the presence of ‘Recommended’ and ‘Sponsored’ content on the Feed. For clarification, sponsored content is the type of content you get to see because the account that posted it paid for it. On the other hand, recommendations are based on the algorithm: using our data, the algorithm tries to predict the content we could like and be interested in. This is a way Instagram to help accounts to be discovered by new people. Another recurring critical point is the drop in reach (the number of followers who actually end up seeing the content) – which has been steadily declining (with people consuming more and more Video content instead of Photos). Many wildlife photographers (as other visual artists making more static work) felt let down by Instagram. And here’s where VERO came in. So is it VERO better from a photography perspective? Let’s find out.
What’s VERO and my first thoughts:
VERO is a social media platform with a subscription-based model, without ads. As it is also free of algorithm, the posts are shared in reverse chronological order on the feed. VERO resembles Instagram in its earlier days in terms of functionality – and it doesn’t look like the creators have made a huge effort to differentiate between the two. After trying it out for a while, here’s my evaluation (based on the current app version):
PROs:
- High quality files and no crop needed (full size photo can be uploaded)
- Possibility to open the photo and zoom in in a much better way than Instagram
- Support for other type of posts: links, books, places and others
- Desktop version makes the visual experience better – making possible to enjoy photos in large format and appreciate the details
- No sponsored content
CONs:
- Basic interaction possibilities: like, comment and save + chat option
- Finding new people to follow is difficult. The only way is to search via hashtags – unless you already know them and look for their name!
- The photo thumbnails on someone’s profile are quite small (smaller than IG) and the underlying label indicating the type of content (ie ‘Photo’) and the first few words of the caption take up quite lots of space.
- App not extremely easy to navigate (for example there is no possibility to go directly from the feed to the profile page)
- Low number of users
- Bugs are very frequent and the interface can be very laggy
NEUTRAL points:
- No recommendations (algorithm): if I understand the idea behind going ‘back’ and avoid the ‘evil’ algorithm, this makes reaching new audience much more difficult.
- Chronological feed: in principle it is nice to see the most recent posts. However, this will work only until the number of users will remain low. As soon as the users will increase, there will be a drop in reach also there. Will really VERO stick to their promise not to introduce any algorithm at that point?
- Difference between Followers and Connections: in principle this is a way to have more control on who sees a post. But I find the levels (acquaintance, friend, close friend or just follower) are way too much.
Conclusion
Is VERO perfect? Of course not. Will it replace Instagram in the short term? I am sceptical about it. For a new social network to succeed, it has to be a perfect mix of familiar and new. I am not sure being almost exactly as an old version of another app would work. Should you join VERO right now? Not absolutely necessary, but keep an eye on it.
The search for a new, better social media platform for photographers is still ongoing!