Thanks to that immensely possible YouTube channel, Neistat probably won’t miss his old job too much, but it’s a different story for Beme’s 22-person staff. For their part, CNN says it’s attempting to find other jobs within the company for as many of them as possible, but that won’t be possible for everyone. There are also plans for CNN to use the technology that made Beme possible for other ventures, including a live news app called Wire that will be released sometime in the future. Beme was sort of a Snapchat inspired app that let users share short video clips that could only be captured with their phones held to their chests, the purpose of this function being that users would have to experience whatever it is they’re filming instead of viewing it on a small screen. The app had already begun to decline in popularity before CNN bought it, but the appeal of such an app for a news media company like CNN. But it just wasn’t the magic bullet CNN was looking for, and the split comes as CNN’s digital arm had a reported $20 million budget shortfall last year.
