Hearing the name Casey Neistat gives mixed reactions from people when I bring him up in conversation. Some people think his work is a gimmick, or can't get over that he smashed a perfectly good Canon with an axe. Personally, I am a huge fan of Neistat, because whatever he's doing, it's working. Throughout his daily vlog, Neistat has hinted at a new app that he and his team have been working on for the past year, and today is the day it went live. Meet Beme.
Beme uses your phone's proximity sensor to start recording content in four second bursts, beeping and vibrating to signal when it starts and stops. You can put your phone up to your chest, or if you want to look really weird, your forehead. I've been using my hand. Basically, cover the sensor, and the app records. I can imagine a lot of shots of the inside of someone's pockets if they don't turn off the app. It's already happened to me.
A friend of mine knew how much I liked Neistat, so he sent me an unlock code. I've been playing around with it at the office (add me to see my test runs: chelseyrogers), and so far as I can tell, it's pretty similar to Snapchat or Periscope, only shorter. It's a bit ridiculous and I want to like it because I like Neistat, but I'm just not sold yet. I used my finger to start the video because, why would I hold my phone to my chest? I only have two friends on Beme so far, so I ventured out and started watching "Stranger" videos. There are "Interesting" (which I am not sure what is so interesting about them), "Nearby" (apparently Miami is close to Charleston), and "Far-Away" Strangers. I think Stranger is a poor choice to call users, because, hello didn't your mother teach you about "Stranger Danger"? All of our content is pretty similar too. Random shots of our computer screens and friends looking at your phone like they've never seen one, trying to understand how the app works. You can't like someone's beme, you can't send hearts, but you can send a real-time reaction selfie while viewing your friends bemes. This means random strangers have received weird faces from me today, so at least that is keeping me entertained.
Neistat urges users to wait and download next week, surely so they can fix bugs and learn from their users' reactions. Once you get an unlock code, you can send a code to a friend. If not, then you've got quite a wait, starting at 99 days. As a photographer, perhaps I could utilize this app for behind the scenes on shoots, or maybe I will just stick to recording the weird antics that happen here at the Fstoppers office. Only time will tell if Neistat's promised updates will be that much better, but being a fan, I hope they will be.
Have you downloaded Beme? What are your thoughts?
Yikes. Did he miss the ball on this? When have you ever been out with friends and they don't take a million pictures to get just the right one before posting to social media?? Never. This needed to be revolutionary if it wanted me to replace my other social channels. Nice little niche app, but I can't see this swaying a lot of users away from Snapchat.
you can say the same about snapchat, the answer is: you just share, dont care about the quality, people will only see the video/pic once. the idea is to get the closer experience to being with someone, and not with the ultra-edited-someone. that said, it's not for me :)
I like Casey's vlogs too so I really want to like the app, but it seems similar/same to Snapchat and neither app makes any sense to me. But what do I know...maybe kids will like it.
This app seems dumb to me BUT honestly every social media app (besides Facebook) seems dumb to me and they are all wildly popular so obviously I am way out of touch with this stuff.
Agreed! For example we're stuck with Instagram as the premier app for photography and it's probably one of the most awkward, least robust photography apps ever made.
From what I have seen and read, it's a bit underwhelming for an App where he had an 2 million dollar budget and spent a year of his time on. But we will see what happens and maybe the younger generations will pick it up and have some fun with it.
A slurry of hipster bullshit. Lets all come up with a brand new Star Bellied Sneach tool so we don't all feel like such tools. Yeah that will do it. Brand the app as a method of not being self absorbed while being completely self absorbed in a totally new way. Nobody will even notice. I was just thinking to myself "self, how can I dump even more pointless shit about "me" upon the world?" The Internet provides solutions to every self made problem.
This concept confuses me. So it's basically Vine, only two seconds less? I don't have an opinion toward Neistat one way or the other, but why would you create what is essentially an app that already exists with multi-millions dollar worth of popularity?
Maybe it's based on the "Six minute abs" business model from Something About Mary....
Harland Williams is glorious in that movie.
As for the app, I try to avoid anything that is social media, except facebook and instagram these days so something like this does not appeal to me.
I'm a daily viewer of his blogs and am in general a fan of his work but I find the app a bit unnecessary. I had been looking forward to the reveal of the app but all we got was a clunky snapchat without a record button. As a fan of his work I hope the app catches on but I for one will not be using it.
I don't think I would ever use this, or want to. Then again I'm 45 years old, and probably outside the age bracket for intended users. Showed the video to my 15 year old daughter, and she turned her nose up at it. Did this thing really cost 2 million dollars to develop?
So every time I stick my phone my pocket this app is going to go off? This whole thing seems to be a very bad idea
Someone put up 2 million dollars so this tool could have his own app?
Did he just try to reinvent Snapchat?
I completely respect and love the work he does and the way he has almost reinvented the personal vlogging space. But an app that is just Snapchat without the 'looking at the screen' part. I'm not too sure about how well the app will really do.
It seems like a lot of the social media apps that take off are based on some kind of limitation shtick. Instagram's square images, Vine's time limit, Snapchats that you can only view once. ...
As far as gimmicks go, I guess it's ok. Stop trying to make your life something it isn't and spending your time experiencing life through your phone's screen... Actually live the moment you're sharing and send your reaction as you see the video. To me, it goes directly after Snapchat. I'm not sure the idea is enough to get people switching though.
I've long been a fan of Casey's video work but I have doubts about this app it just seems so incremental.
If we really want to "live the moment" shouldn't we just put our phones away in our pocket and truly live the moment? I've been following Neistat since his show on HBO and I too am disappointed by what I've seen so far. Then again, I'm clearly not his target audience of youngsters who seemed to be the beta users of the app. To me this seems like a more complicated version of snapchat, which I used to watch others, but didn't actively upload on it. I think Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and some Periscope are more than enough for me.
I'm with you on that one. I'm probably in the targeted age group at 24 but I don't get the point of either apps. With that said, Beme seems like the lesser of two evils for me. Haha