It is no great secret that people, photographers especially, are dissatisfied with the current state of Instagram. Although it is much, much better on desktop, the mobile app generally fills my feed with ads and suggested accounts. If I want to see posts from the people I follow… well, that’s a fun experience.
So… VERO. Like a number of IG photographers, and after some reading around, I made the jump to it, and here are my initial thoughts.
I like it. But there are considerations.
The app itself, desktop and mobile, is excellent. It is clean and easy to use, and the act of posting photographs, etc, is really, really slick. So much more so that the IG. Having the desktop capability is so much more engaging, enabling more flexibility in creating posts. I am not good at putting narrative to photographs on a small screen.
There are a number of functions that I really like. You can control the audience, ranging from close friends to public posting (sort of like the Google Plus circles, if you remember that platform). The pictures are full format, landscape or portrait, with multiple photographs allowed and no restrictions (again a plus over IG). You can hashtag away to your heart’s content, although I have yet to work how to follow a hashtag.
I also like how you can categorise your posts, tailoring them towards photography or books or whatever. This is much more organised than IG, allowing for a more selective feed and a more discerning posting strategy.
The discovery platform is good, searching is again clean and easy, and notifications/DMs are likewise excellent. Oh and you can post links to websites outside of VERO, unlike IG.
And no ads, or suggested posts, filling your feed with unwanted crap. That’s a massive plus.
All in all, now that I am starting to find my feet with the platform and the audience, such that it is, I am really enjoying posting photographs again.
What are the considerations?
As a photographer, and as a nascent platform, it does very much feel that my audience is primarily one made up of photographers, and not the general wider public with a range of interests. An audience of my peers, so to speak, most of whom appear to be insanely more talented than I. But that, whilst intimidating, is also an inspiration. Some of those photos…
The app is currently free, although there will be a subscription fee at some point in the future. If you sign up before then (well, now) you will be considered a ‘founder’ and will be subscription free for the lifetime of your membership. Which is kinda cool.
I don’t have any friends on the platform (yet, hopefully) and whilst the infrastructure is there to have a clean and flexible approach to posting to different audience groups (I cannot emphasise how much I like this aspect of the platform) it does feel like there is a lack of critical mass, although I am sure this will come.
That has always been the main hurdle for any platform - that of critical mass, simply having enough people and enough engagement for the users to feel it is worthwhile making the effort to post. Many platforms have fallen by the wayside because of the above, but it feels like VERO is on the cusp of punching through that barrier. There have been many big names, from all creative industries, jumping into VERO and that in itself creates an inertia and a pull.
I suspect that I will continue using VERO - I enjoy the experience and the lack of constraints helps immensely. The community seems nice, engaged and interested, from the comments I have seen on other posts. There does seem to be a bit of the follow-you-follow-me-unfollow shenanigans, understandable if a bit naughty and not something I can be arsed with. As for IG, well, until the majority of my friends jump across I think I will continue to use it for generic stuff.
So VERO - thumbs up? Yes, but with a little way to go for a double thumbs up.
