Beme’s History

Join me on the journey trough the app’s history after it’s shutdown.

Beme announced back in November that they’re shutting down the app in late January. In June 2016 they introduced their version 1.0, after a long beta period. But their story started almost two years back. I used Beme since the very beginning and wanna show you what has changed in this timeframe.

Beme introduced by the Founder Casey Neistat

One of my favorite apps

Beme became one of my preferred sharing apps quite rapidly. This isn’t very easy to accomplish, considering that the app is in direct competition with services like Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram. While these focus on aspects like self-promotion and nice (approved) content. Beme felt very different.

Other apps focus more on self-promotion, Beme felt very different.

For me as a filmmaker, a platform to purely share video content is a big deal. Competitors introduced video features in the last years, but it isn’t built into their core philosophy. Beme does only this and does it great.

Launch

Beme went live in summer 2016 with support for iOS. For sure I had to try it out. I was one of the first people in my country who was using the new app.

The interface in a beta version (late 2015)

Later I used Beme quite intensely to share my daily life at the army. I could attract a lot of people by sharing my daily routines. Within my 4 months in the army, I doubled the number of followers I had on Instagram. I was featured under the section “interesting people”.

I shared my daily life in the army and could attract a lot of people

Knowing that a lot of people were watching my Beme’s, made it easier for me to stick to a regular schedule. But at some point, the audience felt to fade away. It seemed to not grow anymore.

Reintroduction — Stable 1.0

Beme was launched as a beta version from the beginning. After more than half a year they introduced a first stable version. They tried to fix all the errors they discovered during their beta phase. After the “relaunch”, Beme got a little boost. But this boost sadly faded away after a while.

It’s not easy to survive

I mean, Beme’s competing directly with giants like Snapchat or Instagram. For a 12 heads team this battle is very hard to win. Knowing this, Beme was doing very well. But it was not enough.

Instagram Story was the final dead

At some point, Beme wasn’t used that often. The “famous” people shared very seldom. There was no engagement on the platform anymore. In my opinion, it was just a question of time until I received news like the shut down of Beme. At least, after the launch of Instagram Story the engagement dropped again. I, by myself, explored other apps to share in a similar way.

Features

Share moments and don’t miss them

Beme just records when the infrared sensor is covered. This could be done by pressing the phone to your body or holding it against a wall. As a result, you weren’t able to see your screen while recording. This feature directs the way how people share and how they experience the app drastically. In my opinion to the good. All users could share their moments without missing moments in real life. With Beme, exactly this is possible. This feature also adds more handy behaviors:

• I can share without being watched by others. I’m kinda sharing anonymously.
• It’s so easy to publish. Just cover the screen, release it and almost done. The app will handle the upload in a matter of seconds.

Don’t miss stuff while watching trough your phone. Share moments without missing moments in real life.

Share videos

Beme is built around the idea of sharing video and just video. Stills are not possible. Back then, at the very beginning, this was a very new experience. Nowadays most social media platforms allow video content. This has different reasons, one of the biggest is that it’s now possible to send video content (larger files) over the mobile network to the users. However, videos on Beme were never distributed in high resolution.

Reactions

Social media without interactions are not social and does not exist, right? Comments, votes or likes are features we know. Beme introduced a feature called “reactions”. Until now, I personally have never seen anything similar to this and I will miss it. With reactions, anyone was able to react in an uncensored, true and fast way. While watching a video you could send a picture of you taken by your front face camera, which is always pointing at you. Later the also introduced video reactions.

Facebook added a handful of emojis to represent more moods to choose from. While we’re still limited by 5 emojis, it was a great improvement. Beme was still on top of everything when Facebook launched their new feature. A selfie tells more than a handful of emojis and is a lot faster to do.

A picture tells more than a handful of emojis

Reactions like this aren’t possible in another way and they make me happy

Selfie-Mode

At the very beginning, it was just possible to record while covering the infrared sensor of your phone. Later, in version 1, they introduced the possibility to press a record button inside the app. At the same time, they also added a selfie-mode. From this point on it was possible to use the front camera of the phone. While Beme stayed true to its philosophy, the screen went black while recording. It’s not possible to see yourself or the subject your pointing at while recording.

For me, this is a huge deal. I don’t like this selfie mentality of today. Instagram and especially Snapchat support and force these.

I don’t like this selfie mentality of today.

User Interface

The UI took a very hard turn. At first, the app was not very worked out design wise. Dark with green colors, not the modern look we are used to. But at least it was flat and something special.

Later, they tweaked a lot on the design and turned the app into a bright and cleaner interface.

UI transition between the very beginning to the end

Goodbyes are always hard :(

In later 2016 I received the news that Casey Neistat’s and Matt Hackett’s company was acquired by CNN. Later in the evening I also received a mail which told me that Beme will be shut down. This was the direct consequence of the acquisition. They bought the whole Beme squad to create something amazing. Their goal is to get millennial to the CNN news services.

It’s getting interesting

The old fashion media needs a revolution. I believe Casey Neistat and his team is the perfect fit for this. Their goal is to bridge the gab between social media and traditional media. While Casey knows both worlds pretty well, he has the ability to push new stuff forwards. While a handful of developers in the ex-beme team have the ability to create stunning software.

The old fashion media needs a revolution.

Months before the announcement, the whole team was experimenting with different technologies and software. An example was the app (Exit Poll) launched for the election 2016 in the US. They’re also played around with virtual reality.

The future looks bride for the team

The acquisition by CNN isn’t just luck. It was a solution besides many for the company. Trying to push Beme even more would be very hard and not worth the outcome.

The future looks very interesting for the team and I’m also stocked to see what they’ll create. We’ll see it in summer 2017 according to CNN. The media company put very much thrust into the Beme team. They stay as an isolated company and will get full creative freedom.

New and different challenges will face the Beme team. I hope they can really achieve something big in the next years. This time they’ve got a big player in the back.

Casey’s vlogs

Casey started his vlog about one and a half year ago. It was just before he founded Beme with his business partner Matt, which was an engineer at Tumblr.

I’m very certain that the vlog was a marketing instrument for the upcoming app. As we know, the channel turned out very well. At some point, Beme faded away and Casey focused more on entertainment in his daily videos.

Casey’s vlogs were a marketing instrument for Beme at first

Whether the vlogs initial argument where a marketing or personal driven decision, Casey reinvented the vlog scene. Everyone is doing vlog these days. Watching his vlogs were very interesting and funny.

Watching vlogs turned into a habit

It turned into a habit for me personally. I watched Casey’s videos almost every evening before going to bed. Other watch series, I prefer watching vlogs. They have certain pros. They’re shorter and add more value to my personal life while it’s still a type of entertainment.

Other watch series, I prefer watching vlogs.

Recap

The last year and a half using Beme were great. I was able to share content of my life in an unfiltered and fast way. Most content is shot in first person view (POV) thanks to the feature with the infrared sensor.

Most content is shoot in first person view (POV)

Sadly the app never took off. For me personally, the app was a success. I had more followers on Beme than on other social media platform. I was using Beme a lot — daily. Using Instagram took more time than using Beme while creating less content.

I was able to share content of my life in an unfiltered and fast way.

I will remember the app very positively and hope that other apps will implement some features Beme introduced.

I hope that other apps will implement some features Beme introduced.

Recommended article:

Beme is Shutting Down, But Our Work Is Just Starting_Why I’m proud we’re joining CNN_medium.com

— Marc Wieland_WordPress. Front-End Development. UX. Cinematography. Landscape Photography. Time-Lapse Video._