An app for real people and not filter obsessed drones? Tell me more...

In less than 3 weeks Beme (pronounced beam) has 60k Twitter followers. With Beme, users are attracted to the unedited vision championed by creator Casey Neistat an established film director and producer.

If you’re still thinking ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about!’, well let me put it this way he has 174k adoring Twitter followers himself. Not bad for a guy you’ve never heard of.

In comparison, Snapchat has 840k Twitter followers with 30 million active monthly users and Periscope has 284k+ Twitter followers, with more than 1 million users registering in the first 10 days of the app release (March 2015).

As I covered Periscope in a previous post, I wanted to bring to light the battle for edited and unedited social apps.

The reason why Beam has caught our attention is that their USP is that no editing exists, but users film what they see (for 4 seconds) and once you finish recording, the video is posted to your account automatically (and to all your followers).

Followers then submit feedback (i.e. likes, thumbs up, hearts) but via a selfie. This is demonstrated brilliantly by Neistat here.

This brings us on to the battle between edited and unedited social media. If social media is a representation of real life, then there should be no edit options. After all life does not come with an edit button (no matter how much we wish it at times).

However, brands yes brands not social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook disagree. What’s worse is that even Twitter are contemplating this idea, as you may be aware once a tweet is posted there’s no edit feature.

But when the biggest celebrity in the world with more Twitter followers than Bill Gates, a number one selling app and an estimated net worth of $85M comes knocking, you tend to listen.

That’s right Kim Kardashian tweeted that she had emailed Twitter about an edit function. To my surprise cofounder @Jack replied enthusiastically (Read the full tweets here).

Twitter editing is coming! But how can you tell from one celebrity tweet?

Twitter’s boom is thanks to the mass celebrity following on accounts. The more users on Twitter the more profitable they become blowing any competition out of the water.

The top 10 twitter accounts all have over 40 million followers+ each, the list is staggering and the only place you’ll find Barack Obama, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry side-by-side.

Happy celebs + engaged followers = Twitter #1

Taking away the authenticity of social media and seeing life through filters, edits, selfies and constant posing is diluting the essence of a social experience.

“Social media, it’s supposed to be a digital or virtual representation of who we are as people. Instead of this highly sculpted, calculated, calibrated version of who we are. Told through filters that make our eyes bluer and carefully selected images to portray a version of who we are, that doesn’t really resemble the reality of things.”

Casey Neistat Beme 2015

So which side are you on edited or unedited social media? If you’ve ever thought about building an app for your business? Drop us a line at Forfront and we’ll get in touch.