CNN shutters Beme after Casey Neistat leaves the company

CNN took a chance with popular YouTuber Casey Neistat and bought his video-sharing app Beme, which he co-created with Matt Hackett. The app was released back in May 2016 but didn’t get a lot of users. Despite this, CNN bought the app for US$25 million back in November 2016 and they wanted Beme’s team new kinds of video for the news organization that would perhaps attract a younger audience to them. But this experiment didn’t seem to gain any traction and in a conversation with Buzzfeed, Neistat admitted he couldn’t turn Beme into the kind of video-centric organization he wanted it to be. He got more engrossed with making videos for his own channel. Now, the Beme team is breaking up and Neistat and Hackett are leaving the company and most of the 22-person team will be rehired in other roles within CNN.

Neistat posted a video that supposedly talked about his departure from CNN but this was quickly taken down. Hackett made a post on Medium talking about the products they developed while they were working for the network. One is Panels, an Android and iOS app that lets users upload video opinions on news items, and another is the unreleased Wire, which is said to be a “machine-learning-powered platform for journalists to cover live news in a world where your smartphone is always closer than your TV remote.” Features from these apps will be integrated into the main CNN app. Beme has its own YouTube channel, which only has 40 videos over its six-month life span. Hackett says this channel will continue to exist under CNN’s digital studios.

Source: Android Authority