If you are wondering how successful
a YouTuber can become, try to check out Casey Neistat. He has 6,542,053
subscribers on YouTube and 1,060,000 followers on Twitter. His studio in New
York has become a tourist spot because of his popularity. His videos always on
YouTube trending and the video he uploaded titled “Who I’m Endorsing for
President” gained upwards of 3.3 million views and 178,000 comments within 48
hours.
With gaining so such attention and reputation, Casey
tried to expand his career and created something new. In July 2015, he released
the first version of Beme. Just like other social medias, this app offered a
platform to encourage users to share their real moments with friends in real
times. Beme inspired un-edited and not retouched videos to show the "real
me" and "real life". Another interesting function was users can
simply put the phone in front of their chest as a start button to take video
and then the video will be sent. Also, viewers can take selfies to show how
they react to others' videos while watching and sent back to original creator.
After Casey posted the video titled “meet Beme”, the
video reached 1,500,000 views. Beme has been downloaded more than 1
million times, with 1.1 million videos shared in the first week. However,
not all the responses were positive.
Even though Casey emphasized that this app is
"nothing cute or twee about it", some people thought it is too simple
and had nothing special compared to other social medias. Some compared Beme
with Snapchat and pointed that it essentially takes the core values of Snapchatand presented a bare-bones version of it.
With so much controversy
and discussion, Beme initially soared in popularity. It had trouble gaining
traction and downloads slowed. Finally, it shut down in January 2017. But it
was not a sad ending for Casey and this app: Beme was acquired by CNN for a
reported $25 million.
Social media is all about people. If people lose their
interest on an app, some certain flaws must be existed. However, this may be a
success for Casey, at least it is a worthy attempt for people like him.
As a
famous YouTuber and a founder of Beme, Casey used the reputation he gets from a
social media platform to create another social media platform. He tried to turn
these existing followers into the audience of the new app. It seems like moving
the apples in Box A into Box B. But social media is not a box, people are not
apples which can be moved so easily. Even though the popularity can boost
attention of a new app, it is only the first step.
Hi,yiming.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first time hearing this app, and I found it a creative social media.One of its creations is that made recording start easily ，which means users can make a video without disturbing their lives.Moreover, the designed layout is Beme's another advantage.However,just as you said in the article ,customer may show huge interest at first, but if Beme want to maintain their customer, Beme should at least optimize it's function to solve the flaws as the user complaint in the article.
Hi yiming,
ReplyDeleteI quite agreed with your point that even though the popularity can boost attention of a new app, it is only the first step. I think that more and more people enjoy using their own fame online to earn money. Many online celebrities like to use their fame to attract people to consume in their online shop. In fact, the quality of their products is not guaranteed. I'm not entirely against this behavior. However, I consider that those online celebrities should promote the right things to their customers.
Yiming, just like what you said, either groundswell nor social media is a box. We can't control our audiences to move to the box we want them to go. Our new idea may be interesting at the time it comes out. But groundswell can be just like testers, who will examine the feasibility of the idea. Like this example, however, Casey's idea was pretty meaningful, people found out this can't work.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this example.