Beme: App Review

Hello everyone! Today, i'm here to give my thoughts on the Casey Neistat project called Beme. Beme has a very compelling idea that introduces something new to the Social Networking industry: all Bemes are unedited, and you can't see what you record until the Beme is uploaded. It also uses the sensor to detect your face in a phone call to take the footage. This means that you are using your eyes as this sort of viewfinder. This gives a very human experience, and all Bemes seem to have more depth than your average vlog.

Beme hasn't been around for long, and the app kinda shows. When you go into the app, sometimes the sensor won't work correctly, or when you try to use the selfie feature, you can't stop recording until time runs out. These are some bugs in the app, but it's only been around for a year. Another problem I have with the app is it's inability to share to other social networks. The only way to do this is to save the Beme, open up the app you want to use Beme with, upload the clip, cut the clip to a good time length and... blah. The app should be able to share Bemes with other services, such as Instagram or Twitter. This simple integration could open up Beme to a lot more people, and create a bigger user database. For the app, this would be great.

The app so far doesn't have a very big following. Casey has promoted it in a lot of his vlogs, but this isn't enough to propel the app forward. In my research the company hasn't come out with a user number, but with a statistic that could change your point of view: 1.1 million video shares. This statistic was released by TechCrunch back on July 28th of 2015. Now, this might seem like a small number, but then again, this statistic was released a long time ago (within a week of launch). That might seem like a lot, but that was back when Casey had been hyping the app for a long time. The real statistic that would make everybody's minds think is the amount of DAUs or Daily Active Users. This means how many people come back to the app, and continue to use it. Now this leads me to another problem with Beme: it's not-so user friendly interface.

One of my favorite shows today is called Silicon Valley. One section of the 3rd season (spoiler alert) is about how Pied Piper (the show's fake compression company) interface isn't ready for consumers, The people of Silicon Valley really love it, and know how to use it, but then when released to the public, the average consumer doesn't understand it. Now, I don't think that Beme takes it to the level of misunderstanding as the show does, but it's somewhere along those lines.

When you first open the app, you are guided through a short tutorial (sign up, basic use, etc) and then you are sent into the app. So while doing the tutorial, I was having a hard time figuring out how the app works, but I figured it out. For me, it wasn't as hard as it might be for someone who didn't have a great idea of what the app was, your average consumer. When your average consumer gets their hands on the produce, they might not know about the sensor by your camera, or how it's activated. Having prior knowledge of those things helped me get through the tutorial, but not everybody is going to know these things. Anyways, when you get into the app itself, it get's complicated. So at first when I tried it, it took me a few tries to actually figure it out. Bad things happened. Bad moments or whatever the case, I didn't know how to delete them (until later). Then once I figured it out, I didn't know that Bemes were put together if filmed in the same relative period of time. Those are some of the things they should explain in their tutorial. Then, I accidentally sent a reaction without even knowing, because they never explain what that is in the tutorial. For someone like me who understands technology, and has worked with a few different interfaces, it was hard! For an average person... they might not get passed to part of recording! Even with Kevin Spacey explaining it, it was hard to catch on.

Once you catch on however, you are greeted with a fun app, that's great to use. A little while after starting, I got hooked. Once you understand Beme, you love it. I started uploading my Bemes to YouTube a little while later, and started editing up vlogs of my day to day life from the app. It may take a little while to understand the app, but it's great once you did!

To recap, this app does have some major problems that will put it out of reach from a market of consumers, but with some work, these kinks could be taken out of the picture and widen the market for this app. The app is now one of my favorites on my phone, and i'll continue being a user for a while now. For a lot of people, Beme might not be their thing, or not make sense. But for the Cade Earicks, the Casey Neistats, or the Kevin Spaceys of the world, they might see the vision for this app, and see that their vision continues to perfection, one Beme at a time.

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