In most cases when it comes to the ‘next big thing’ in social media, it’s the younger generation of users that set the trend. Then if a platform takes off with young people we see a rise in older users, followed by a decline in younger users once the next new platform appears.

An example of this: Snapchat had seemingly struggled for years, but according to our own research with young people confirmed by other larger studies, young people love the app and many prefer to use it over Facebook. Now we’re seeing businesses and slightly older users take a liking to the AR filter loving platform, although Instagram seems to be scratching a ‘story’ content itch with its introduction of Instagram Stories late 2016. Another example is Vine, before it’s decline, changed the way we consumed video online making it a staple way in which we consume media online across all platforms – everything starting with just a ‘7 second video’ concept, and helping the way of video memes becoming a mainstream trend. Vine never really had the chance of becoming a competitor with the social media giants, but it certainly captured the hearts of young people, and created hundreds of new young influencers that many have since moved over to YouTube. There’s even a corner of YouTube where you can find hundreds of thousands of Vine tributes and compilation videos.

So it was surprising when Vero popped up over night this weekend without the inital ‘young people first’ process, with many Instagram users sharing their move over because of issues with new updates from Instagram, including an algorithm which many felt punished by, losing out on engagement and follower increase because of the changes. Vero offers a chronological feed with new and interesting ways to share content.

Vero allows users to post recommendations of movies, books, location and music, as well as options to post videos, photos and links. Vero is clearly a visual app, we’d say it’s similar to Instagram minus a few features (but plus some different ones too). Vero also promises that their users are their customers so will provide the platform on a small subscription basis, however waived the first 1 million subscribers’ fee to get the ball rolling. As their user count reaches 1 million, we’ll be interested to see if charged subscriptions in place of ads will benefit or strangle the new platform.

This rise of a new social media in a way that Vero took over in a weekend is extremely rare, especially for new platforms trying to take on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just a week or so ago, we hosted specialist visual social media training to other marketing professionals from around Hull, and there wasn’t a hint that Vero would have any significance for a long time. This really shows the nature of the world of social media marketing’s ever-changing face, proving that being on top of the game requires a lot of research, and therefore, time.

Luckily, you’re reading this, which means that you actively keep up with at least one marketing company which openly shares its knowledge and lessons learnt. On top of informative articles and video broadcasting, we also offer bespoke training and workshops for varied abilities, so you don’t have to spend time focusing on marketing research every day, you can just get an updated run down from the experts.

If you’d like to be kept up to date with new training dates, please email us to be signed up to our monthly mailing list (it’s not every month and we never spam, cross our hearts!)