Launched in 2015 by billionaire Ayman Hariri, the fast-growing social app has been in the spotlight for the past two weeks. Competing with top social media apps, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Vero seems to be the only social app that has come close to becoming a viable alternative in a while.

A week ago the app ranked so low it didn’t even appear in the App Store’s top 1,500 apps; today it’s the most popular app in the App Store.

Should your brand be on it? Let’s take a look at what we know.

What is Vero?

In essence, Vero is much like Instagram, being a photo-sharing app with a few important differences.

Vero is chronological in its’ newsfeed, ad-free and allows you to post a wider variety of content including, music, links, books, film recommendations and even allows purchasing without leaving the app.

It also lets you distinguish connections based on their relationship to you. You can designate people as close friends, friends, acquaintances, or followers and opt to share posts specifically with these groups.

Vero also emphasizes its privacy policy and collects minimal amount of data about its users, like their names, email addresses and phone numbers, without providing that data to advertisers or other third parties.

Why the sudden boom?

There has been a lot of public frustration surrounding recent algorithm changes in both Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat has also been lambasted for its new interface and the complaints about the level of advertising on all three of these platforms are at an all time high.

In addition, News feed algorithm changes on both Instagram and Facebook have made it more difficult for publishers to get their content seen.

So, can Vero compete?

Let’s look at a few statistics from the past two weeks.

• As of March 1, 2018 Vero reportedly has over three million registered users.
• At the end of February 2. 500,000 users joined Vero In 24 hours, doubling its user base.
• Before February 28, 2018, Vero had garnered 600,000 downloads across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store during its lifetime.
• Vero reached the #1 spot in App store in less than a week.
• Vero saw a 6x increase in search popularity in February 2018.
• Across 18 countries on the 28 February 2018, Vero was the most downloaded social app during a single day.
• 21 to 40-year-olds make up half of Vero’s users.
• 540,000+ Instagram posts currently contain the hashtag #Vero.

In short, it looks like Vero is gaining viral traction and is the latest social app for early adopters.

Why should you care?

Though the app is nowhere near Instagram’s 800 million MAUs or Facebook’s 2.1 billion, its growth is incredibly impressive and worth keeping an eye on.

Vero’s functionality, capabilities and focus on user experience are capitalising on the growing dissatisfaction with Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, which is may just have opened the door for Vero to get a space at the main table.

The ability to pay directly from within the app makes it appealing for businesses, and brands that get onto the app early will enjoy new ways to interact with customers and more content exposure to their target market than they would have on Facebook or Instagram.

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We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on Vero and will keep you in the loop. If you’re looking for a new way to connect with your customers, Vero might just be it.

If you’ve tried the app please share your experience below.

“We didn’t set out to make a revolutionary social network. Just one we wanted to use. Here’s how we did it.” – Vero

Tags: facebook, Instagram, social, social apps, social media, Vero