The Future of Beme...???

[JHRAYMOND]

I would like to know about the future of Beme.

I'm feeling pretty miserable about it right now. The severe glitches, the lack of support from Beme, the non-existent push to bring awareness to Beme by it's creators.... it isn't looking good for us.


I propose using this thread to post/discuss current news, updates, speculation and rumour. Links to documents, news items and anything 'insider' you may stumble across. 

Recently I've had an interesting 'food for thought' chat with Joseph.K on the business and money side of Beme's startup, and just yesterday DJMorley left several reactions for me thoughtfully discussing the sale of Beme to new parties.

I think all this sort of stuff should be on here. I think several of you are keener and more capable at sleuthing this sort of very relevant news and speculation and I'd love to read your thoughts on these issues here!


Cheers


Jeremy

[kozjegyzo]

I'd love to see those conversations. Could you tell us where we can find them? Maybe link them here...

[josephk]

Here is Beme's Form D: www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1630254/000163025415000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

Note that this was almost two years ago. In the grand scheme of the IT world, the amount is a drop in the bucket. The odds of that money still being available are little to none. I've gone through more than that on IT projects retrofitting servers in less than year.

The SEC does not have any amendments on file in addition to the original form. This might explain some things. They're out of money and have been capped by their investors. I noticed one seems to be more star struck than actually concerned about business who might be funneling money outside of the equity agreement. It is possible to get additional advancements without necessarily providing equity and form filing, in other words. Highly doubtful though. Saving videos requires significant data storage fees either locally onsite (the most expensive option) or based on subscription to web services if the servers are offsite hosted by a vendor (the more dire of the scenarios as the vendor can pull plug and withhold videos if not paid - it depends on Beme's Service Level Agreements with a server vendor).

Net: Equity holders have probably given them ultimatums. $2.6MM isn't enough to handle IT along with global marketing campaigning. Yes - you need to campaign or advertise to increase usage provided that a revenue stream is in place to counter it. None of that happened. This might explain why Beme has shifted to building Facebook enabled apps. Facebook was quoted as giving out large sums to users to use their new live stream services. This also alludes to seed money paid by Facebook to developers to further promote live stream service using their new APIs. Think about it.. Why pay to either host storage onsite or someone contractually when users could just upload to Facebook who then pays for that storage. We serve one of their server centers here in the Carolinas to improve their electrical efficiency.

Side note: Articles from the start of Beme questioned the need. The article stated that authenticity was boring - why Snapchat and Instagram are more popular. Android download counts would prove that. Android OS is over 55% of the marketplace. There have been 100k+ downloads (Android's next marker is 500k on the Play Store). Take into account one user has 1-3 downloads of the app, it narrows that down further. I think it is statistics like this that are sobering wake up calls by investors.

[Deleted]

I'm fairly certain that this will end before New Year.

I have the Core lot of you on FB, if & when this is resolved.

[Deleted]

I just read through the filing Joe.
It reads that there are 19 investors.
I I saw an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, where he was touted as one of the Investors of Casey Neistat's new App
...Beme!

Just thought it was interesting.

[josephk]

So here's what I've learned over the last month:
1. Beme support is basically null as they have moved on to other apps.
2. They pay for server space and cloud services from Amazon (ACW).
3. Their new apps have been focused on live stuff to Facebook.
4. They were thinking about doing an update to Beme that would include sharing to YouTube and starting a new Beme within the 1 hour timeframe that has since been tabled.
5. Not confirmed, but I personally believe most of their staff is in transition. I think Android team is next to nonexistent.

Long story short, my question is how much more money do they have left to continue to pay for storage with Amazon. Also, I would never publish anything from any of their apps (including new) because they are taken in portrait mode.

[DjMorley]

Well I think your all right beme has died and the staff don't seem to care at all. I'm glad I have you guys on Facebook as we have all made great friends so if anything we need to thank beme for bringing us togther. Just use youtube guys you all make great short videos and LONG and that stuff will work just as well on there to.. I would say I would miss you all but I won't as we are all sticking togther and will have friends for life....

[dman]

Certainly, other social media have had more of a community feel to them lately, and that's 100% thanks to the BeMe Whanau going multi-platform as the engagement spreads elsewhere.