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I stumbled upon a new potential IG without the ads or the much-hated algorithm. I have a love-hate relationship with InstaGram – at times I get so annoyed by the rate at which ads (irrelevant ones) bulk up my feed and eat up my scrolling time. Another big peeve with IG is the fact that it decides when I get to see a post – sometimes its 23 hours later, sometimes its 3 days later. For a while, I have been looking for an alternative and this is first promising one that I have found so far.

Its still relatively new but it has an interesting manifesto which you can read here. In a nutshell – its like IG but NO ADVERTS and your feed is CHRONOLOGICAL. So how will Vero make money? Their manifesto is that they will charge a subscription to use the service. How much that will be it is not yet clear. Right now they are offering free lifetime subscriptions to the first 1 million sign ups.

The interface is not as intuitive as IG but then again this is still in the beta phase. It does have some features I like. You can categorise people who you connect with as followers, acquaintances, friends or close friends. It gives a more flexible option of sharing – you decide who gets to see what. You can also easily share movies (and rate them), books, website links among other things.

So far its been glitchy because it has just become very popular, so much that the servers are struggling to keep up. Vero have said they are sorting things out via their twitter feed. I think these are teething problems that most apps have as they become more popular.

From a business perspective – I think they are on to something. There are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with what IG has become but still want to make connections in their online communities. However – at some point revenue streams become relevant in order for a business to survive, regardless of manifestos. I am not sure how well the subscription model will stand up to budget savvy users. Plus there is also the fact that Google or Facebook can easily buy up Vero (Facebook does that kind of stuff regularly) and then it will be a different story altogether.

If you do sign up to Vero you can find me on there as SaturdayNightStitch. So far I am having fun on there despite the glitches. Are you as frustrated with IG as I am? Would you consider paying to have no ads and a chronological feed? 

Thanks for stopping by,

Peace and love,

Hila