Earlier this week, my CEO called a MANDATORY MEETING. I mentioned that we had a shit ton of cream cheese but no bagels. He threw a 20 on my desk and said “Go to Panera.” I obliged.
When I came back with said bagels (which were delicious), the mandatory meeting was regarding bagels. Wait. No, the mandatory meeting was regarding social media. This is when I sorta had to speak up. In brief, our small, somewhat niche company in the technology world is floundering, social media wise. I pointed out that I was now managing both the ‘corporate blog’ Twitter account as well our main Twitter account, and; that I had created YouTube channels for both, and; that we were actively working on creating original content and aggregating relevant info via Twitter to maintain at least the illusion that we are tech consultants and not dinosaurs. So now I manage the Facebook account.
Regardless, I take my boss’ comments, bagels, and mandatory meetings to heart, so my training that week for the team was basic social media skills, what the hell Snapchat is, and why we need to be more involved. < There’s the rant.
Since none of the shit that I write for my ‘corporate blog’ gets published, I complain about stuff here. Guess I’ll start doing app reviews or whatever. Now that the social media thing has hit to close home or, office (never quite sure), think I’ll start with one of the newest and that is Beme.
The backstory: This an invite code only (as of now) social media app was developed by Casey Neistat, who is a rather famous YouTuber, and you can find his Wikipedia bio here. Anyway, the guy’s legit but also weird as hell so, this new app of his is like a damn art school project. I’ll try to sum it up as best as I can without sounding callous and pedantic:
The idea behind Beme is that it uh, tries to strip down the self reflexive ego that urges one to post a selfie to Instagram, hashtag the crap out of it, and get a bunch of likes. There’s none of that. No profile page, no ‘feed’ if you will, just a list of followed users and oddly, ‘interesting strangers’ who you can decide to follow if they pop up. Think Snapchat, not Vine or something for a minute. These are self destructive videos and last four seconds. Thing is, an activation of the camera to post only happens when you press your phone to your chest, front camera forward, and record. POV. Four seconds. That’s the idea. The app uses the proximity sensor on the face of the phone as a record button. So yeah, you can slap it against the wall do the selfie thing. But again, (for me) so far, it just seems like a damn art school project.
Actually, it’s totally bananas. If you do not have an unlock code you can download the app, pick a username and wait like 90 days or something. Or you can get a code that can be created by an already accepted user. That’s how I got in. Then you have to do the text message code and blah blah, you know how it works. Anyway, I’m running iOS 9 beta 2 so the proximity sensor doesn’t work like it shows in the video. The only way I can use the app is to press it to my chest POV style, and somehow that seems to go through. I followed one person and that Casey guy, and just kept getting errors. The next day, out of the blue, the app was a bit more functional, and I just took four second vids of my cat running my life.
40 followers later: < Happened like two hours after stupid cat posts. I basically followed everyone back and now I feel like I’m in the wild wild west of social media platforms. It’s still super buggy but I really think that is because I am running iOS 9. Here’s what I’ve seen so far:
No screenshots, because that’s the point. Bros hanging out on Fire Island. Skateboarders. Shit ton of skateboarders. An Asian girl who lives in Canada, unboxes bluetooth speakers for the hell of it, and goes out for dumplings with her mom. A family in Sao Paulo Brasil staying at a condo that I am quite certain I stayed at ten years ago. Dude in Paris, baguettes and such. NYPD lights. Bike rides across the Brooklyn Bridge. More skateboarders. People by themselves just filming what they are doing on their MacBooks. Fancy cars in LA, grilling chicken on a Saturday. Quad-copter drone testing in Scotland. A real live deer. Freedom Tower. Waiting for a train in Great Britain, and she says, “I don’t get this, what the fffuuuuuck.”
In a way, it’s charming to see so intimately into someone’s life beyond a profile page, and that’s not voyeurism IMO, it’s technology that people are ready to use to take over the world, do an ollie, or just shoot a four second vid of their damn cat.
Score for @bemeapp [6/10]
Happy Saturday.
[technically] Distracted. 