CNN has acquired Casey Neistat’s video sharing app Beme, which is considered a slow success by investors and users alike.

CNN aims at reaching out to younger audiences thanks to Neistat’s experience as a reporter and Youtuber, since he has gathered a fanbase of 5.8 million subscribers. Neistat has already announced he intends on suspending his daily vlog to focus on this new project. The new video app based on Beme will be launched in the summer of 2017.

Beme app
Bebe app in iOS. Image credit: Beme.

CNN plays bets on the future with a Youtube star

35-year-old Neistat will take the role of the project’s executive producer. CNN expects he will put his resources to use for launching the new platform and forming a team of developers, content creators, and designers to allow the project to grow.

Beme was devised as a social app where users share authentic videos, seeing that people like to primarily post things that make them happy and improve the perception they provide to their followers, rather than things that make people sad and content that will drive away followers and contacts.

“The new company will be devoted to filling the world with excellent, timely and topical video and empowering content creators to use technology to find their voice. It won’t be what most people think of as ‘news,’ but it will be relevant to the daily conversations that dominate our lives,” announced CNN in a statement.

Neistat has proposed that social media curates a version of who we are, which is something that will get out of hand seeing that there is no one to address this issue.

Just like Snapchat, Beme records a short video and shares it with the user’s followers. The difference is that the user is prompted to record the video from the chest, while a beep would signal that recording has started. A second beep would let the user know that the recording has ended. The video is supposed to not be reviewed by the user, and after a follower sees it, the video would then erase itself from the app.

The app used the iPhone’s proximity sensor, but due to the fact that women are not flat-chested as men, some argue that Beme was not designed with female users in mind. It has also been suggested that being authentic is boring for social media followers, who deal with authenticity in their daily life and reach out to social media to have a glimpse at other people’s lives.

Neistat has tried his hand at the world of apps, but it is just recently that he revealed that he was satisfied with what he has accomplished through vlogging.

Perhaps CNN intends on having a safeguard for the future, seeing that Neistat is one of the most successful YouTubers to provide quality and realistic content for a large audience.

“I think of it as an orange—you squeeze that opportunity until there’s no juice left. And the dangerous part is when you don’t move on when there’s no juice left, it’s like moving laterally instead of moving vertically. I think from a career perspective, you should only move vertically,” he stated on his blog.

Source: Variety