It is time for us to do a social media update and, specifically look into what is going on with Instagram and I want to introduce you to a new app called Vero that is starting to come up in conversation in the reptile community.

But first, let’s deal with Instagram.

Instagram: Ah, good ole Instagram. Poor Instagram. Their roadmap seems to be to just copy what anyone else is doing. And this tradition continues with the rise of Be Real. Be Real is a new social media app that sends you a random message once a day and you will have to take a picture of what you are doing within two minutes of getting the notification or it will shame you to your friends. It uses both cameras so you get a good shot of your unwashed face and the stained coffee mug you have been using for the last ten years. Because you are “being real”.Get it? Well, Be Real is climbing the popularity charts for teenagers who have taken to it. And, ever on the prowl for new things to subject their users to, Instagram is now looking at adding the Be Real features to Instagram. Of course, I guess we really don’t care how many disjointed features they want to Frankenstein onto their app as long as they are willing to maintain the army of engineers that have to make sure it all works, but what is really angering the people who have been with Instagram for years and years is when the algorithm is tweaked and we all have to change what we are doing so Instagram can pay WWF with the latest big social media app. So, will we now be bumped up in reach if we post bed head pictures?

I am afraid I don’t have a lot of good news on the Instagram side because they are just going to annoy everyone sometime or another with their indecision as to what they want to be when they grow up.. 

So, all I can do is address the stagnation many people are experiencing on Instagram. Right now, at least, you have to play the reels game. Post videos that are under 10 seconds. Use trending music. Post three times a day. I wish I could tell you to make that a quality ten seconds and to pack as much as you can in that, but, alas, I have to tell you to pack it with bright colors, something to make people laugh, or cute puppies. And I say that only partially tongue in cheek. Instagram is looking to replicate the endless scroll of TikTok so they will promote the mental candy. To be sure, there are incredible educators that have been able to expertly infuse quality into the reels format. But I hate to say that this kind of effort is not necessarily rewarded. Instagram is catering to numbers and so your reel needs to appeal to lots of people. 

Now, to be fair, the good people at Instagram are well aware of the tightrope they walk. If they continue to push like they have they will end up with a legion of brain dead followers and the true artists will go to other platforms where their effort appears to give reward. So Instagram has implemented a system where they monetarily compensate select people who make Reels. And they are trying to figure out ways to highlight small creators. But the goal of beating TikTok at the endless scroll and highlighting small creators may not be compatible. So, Instagram is still trying to figure out who they are. You know, Instagram, we’ve been friends for a long time. I have seen you grow up and become this beautiful being. It hurts to see you in such inner turmoil. I see your true colors …come on everyone, show IG we are here…, and that’s why I love you..

Now, that said, as frustrated as I am with Instagram It is still the best app for starting a social media outreach. So it is worth sticking around and seeing how the dust settles. As for me, I have found tremendous value in the true followers that I have. We all know that there are so many bots and fake accounts following all our profiles. Follower count is important and is a metric by which we are judged so it is always worthwhile to play the game to get that number to go up. But do not forget to pay attention to your true followers. They are the people who drop by your stories and hang out during your live sessions. I have over 25k followers, but I value the hundred who show up at my live sessions and the ones that I can connect their screen name with their real name. These are the people that matter. So, don’t get so blinded by frustration at the follower game that you forget you have true fans mixed in with those tens of thousands. Make sure you take care of them. There is still massive growth potential on the Instagram app. Your challenge is to make sure that whatever you do that is serves your purpose and not just Instagram’s. They want you to have massive numbers of followers. They do not care if those followers actually care about your content or were simply amused enough to hit follow in case you amused them again. You, on the other hand, have a purpose for all the effort you are putting in. If it is just the ego boost of having massive numbers of followers then your and Instagram’s motivations are in line. Go forward with all success. But if you are looking for people who are truly engaged with your niche topic, be careful not to play Instagram’s game so much that you alienate the people you really want. I hope I wasn’t confusing when I said that. Just make sure that what you are doing to get success on Instagram aligns with how you measure success personally.

That said, the discontent with Instagram is rising and you may be hearing more and more about a social media platform named Vero. 

Enter the challenger!

Vero is an Instagram-like app that was founded in 2015, had a brief spike in popularity, and then settled out of the limelight. But it is getting attention again as more and more people are getting frustrated with Instagram. Vero is essentially like Instagram used to be. So why would anyone want to leave Instagram to go to a lesser known platform that is like Instagram? Well, because Instagram doers’t want to be Instagram any more. It thinks we are in a perpetual Halloween and it is trying to dress up like TikTok. Or Be Real. Or anything besides Instagram. Talk about a self-esteem problem. So the people on Instagram that loved Instagram for what it was are looking for other places to be. 

Now, new social media apps trying to gain a foothold in this app saturated world are dime a dozen. The bottom line is that a social media app isn’t much good unless all of your friends and people you want to spy on are there and it is difficult to get a billion people to coordinate to move anywhere. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok got lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I don’t think I would have much argument that if you asked any of those founders to recreate their success if they started over today that they would, most likely, fail. It wasn’t that they were geniuses. They captured a moment. And, today, with social media apps strew about the table and floor it takes something substantial to shoot to the top. 

I am sure many of you remember the drive to shift our Facebook activity to MeWe. Facebook is openly aggressive towards animal groups and we are under constant threat of entire groups disappearing in the middle of the night because some members uses the word “sale” in their post. Yet, we all choose to live under that oppression because that is where the people are. This just shows the power of having a large membership. It is hard to get people to come to a place where there are no people. But you need people to get people. Nice catch 22. So, will Vero buck this trend? I’ll let you know in ten years. In the meantime, I’ll give you an introduction.

The app is very much like Instagram back when it had an identity. You can share pictures or video and they scroll by in a feed. You are shown accounts you follow and their posts are presented in chronological order.

You have various loops, as they call them, where you have a close friends loop, friend loop, acquaintance loop, and following loop. You assign each of your posts to a loop level and every loop level above that can see the post. So you could share personal day-to-day family posts with close friends, your coffee shop adventure with friends (and close friends would see it too) and so on. Everyone, including your non-follower public, can see the lowest level. You are even able to give each loop level a different avatar. Kind of a nice touch.

You can follow anyone you want to see their follower level posts. And you can ask to be connected. If you are accepted then you do not know what level you are placed at. If someone wants to be connected to you, you decide what level they are at and they will not know what you decided. Private chats are available only with people you have connected with. So you will find a much more calm private message box on Vero because only people you accept as a connection can send you a message.

One nice departure from on old is that you can put links in the captions.

Now, the big question that should be on everyone’s mind is that if there is no algorithm trying to pick out what you might like to see in the hopes of getting you lost in a cascade of content, how do people find you? That is where hashtags come in. Vero uses hashtags so, Instagram people from the ancient 2020s will be right at home. Your potential followers need to search for you. So, you won’t do well if you are addicted to seeing massive growth numbers. But, the benefit of this is that your followers are more likely to be real followers that are interested in what you have to post. I know it isn’t the dopamine hit the you get on Instagram or TikTok, but it is more real. So, red pill or blue pill?

Exploring Vero seems like you have stumbled upon some hidden bohemian alley where there aren’t a lot of crowds, but there are artists showing off their work all over. So, reptile people or entrepreneurs might feel a little out of place at first. But all are welcome. In fact, Vero is even more welcoming than the larger platforms with no policies against sale of animals. Starting a massive ad campaign would be enormously out of place there and I suspect would not be the path to success, but it is okay to be open with the fact that you are a breeder and not have to scrub every post for the wrong trigger word that will get your account removed. It is kind of refreshing to be out from under that burden.

Conclusion:

There is a small reptile community on Vero, but it is growing. 

Don’t go to Vero expecting huge growth, but is it worth gambling on the platform? No one can say. I m sure many of us are kicking ourselves for not doubling down on Youtube ten years ago. But remember that back then there were all sorts of video hosting apps. There was no clear cut sure thing. Vine was an incredible rocket ship for exposure. Until it suddenly was shut down after four short years. So, where will Vero end up? Well, it is more well known than Peach and Ello…have you heard of those? Probably not. But there is no way to tell what is going to be the rage in ten years. TikTok grew out of Musical.ly. I bet few of you knew what that was. The people who grow with a platform are on the ground floor when it takes off. But it may take years of plodding along until something happens. I created my Vero account in 2018 and it is only now, four years later that I am actually mentioning it here.

Social media requires a critical mass of people to be part of the platform. This is why you can have so much hate from people towards Facebook but they still log on. It is because where else are all their friends? And what good is posting to a social media platform like Vero that has just a sliver of people interested in reptiles? Well, there really won’t be much return on investment until there are more. But, that is starting to happen. Richard Stewart of The Tarantula Collective, Adam Wickens of Wickens Wicked Reptiles, Chris and Casey from Garden State Tortoise, Zac Herr the reptile photographer, Yvette Strand from Misty Mountain Pants… a number of well- known reptile community members have moved their attention to Vero. With large names shifting over, more people will follow. And nothing says that this digital artists community won’t have a strange reptile subculture develop in their midst. Nothing is stopping us! 

So, what do I say? Try it. It costs nothing right now. Get an account and commit to rooting around on there once a week or so. Get a foothold. I have been posting more regularly on my account under the Bill Strand name there so join up and follow me, Richard, Adam, Chris&Casey, Zac, Yvette and search around for other people in your particular interest. We all have kind of coalesced around using the hashtag #reptilecommunity to be able to find each other. So join up and let us know you are there by including that hashtag on some of your photos. I know many of you have started or have considered starting a back-up account on Instagram in case your account gets removed without warning in the dead of the night. Well, why not diversify your portfolio and, instead, make that back-up account as a new account on Vero?

The growth is slow, but it feels fresh. No bots or fake accounts. No, those won’t show up until Vero becomes a big name. So, for now, think of Vero as a new land and a frontier waiting to be settled. The railroad may be built through there some time in the future. You may get a general store? But right now, it is just you and a handful of other explorers seeing what this app can become. So, I say, check it out. If we get enough people checking it out we might actually find ourselves establishing a new social media corner for the reptile community in this digital world. And, remember, we have an appointment ten years from now where I will authoritatively let you know how the Vero story goes.

And so, there you go. The social media landscape is ever shifting and we can only surf the waves. We can only know what the right decisions are when we look back towards the past so we just have to make our decisions as to where we invest our energies and go forward without hesitation.