What is Vero? Learn more about the ad-free “new Instagram”

The feed is composed of your posts and the posts of people you’re either connected with or people you follow. We don’t curate it, manipulate it, insert advertising in it, or hold back posts. You see what has been shared with you, when it’s been shared with you. You won’t have to pay to “boost your post”, or “reach your audience.” Other platforms like Facebook and Instagram have a tendancy to fill in the blanks with the content they believe users would like based on their previous use. But with Vero, you rid yourself of this clutter by only seeing the content you’ve subscribed to or which has been shared directly with you by your connections. There’s no danger of ads interrupting the user experience whatsoever. Sounds great so far!

If it’s ad-free, how will it make money? Vero have been very clear in their business model that it will be paid for by subscription, with an annual price that is said to amount to “a couple of cups of coffee”. Ah, we knew there would be a catch. However, the first million users on the platform will be able to use Vero for free, for life.

Vero’s business model isn’t based on serving advertisements. As a subscription-based service, our users are our customers, not the product we sell to advertisers. Subscriptions aren’t the only way Vero makes money though, as posting on the app will also allow users to access the products they’re sharing with each other. And if a click-through results in a sale, it’ll take a small percentage of the sale as a commission.

But what is Vero? Vero — meaning ‘Truth’ — is a social platform where you have the choice to share movies, tv, music, books, places, photos, videos, and links. Who you share that content with is entirely up to you, because it has four separate ‘tiers’ that allow you to decide who can view it. When creating a post, you can set it to only be visible to your close friends, your friends, acquaintances or your followers. And when you add a contact, you’ll then set which of those ‘tiers’ they fall under. But don’t worry, your contacts won’t know what tier they’ve been put in, so you won’t get in trouble with any of your pals like back in the brutal ‘MySpace Top 8’ days… This just means you can share relavent content to the people you think will enjoy it most, and hide content from those who might not be that fussed. 

Will it last? Good question. We’ve seen some very ambitious new social apps come along and swiftly go (*cough* Ello *cough*). I mean, to challenge ‘The Big Three’ (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is a pretty brave task. But since we’ve started to become more frustrated with some of the algorithms and features of these platforms, now might just be the perfect time for an app just like Vero to really take off. We’ll have to give it a spin to see. Until then, we’ll be sticking with Instagram, so give us a stalk there.