Verizon’s struggling Go90 app might be Go90ing away

• Go90 is a digital media streaming service created by Verizon subsidiary Oath, and available exclusively to Verizon customers.
• Over the past two years, the service has struggled to gain traction, and now it looks like it will fold soon.
• The content currently hosted on Go90 will branch off into other Oath-owned companies.

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Tim Armstrong gave a talk at the Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, CA, on Tuesday. During the talk, he had a few things to say about Go90, Verizon's digital media app. Essentially, he says Go90 is not long for this world.

"The brand will remain I don't know how long," Armstrong said. He is the CEO of Verizon's digital media subsidiary Oath, which oversees the Go90 project.

The Go90 app launched in late 2015 exclusively for Verizon customers. A direct response to the overwhelming success of Netflix and other media companies creating original content. Go90 is geared towards Millennials, Generation Z, and gamers. The app streams ad-supported video content in the form of scripted shows, movies, short clips, and news.

"Go90 was a super ambitious project, which was essentially trying to start an internet mobile video service from scratch," Armstrong said during the Code Media talk. "It was highly likely we're going to stub our toe a huge number of times."

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What Armstrong is referring to with the "stub our toe" line is the myriad issues Go90 has faced since its launch. The biggest issue being that not many people use the service; during February of last year, Go90 averaged 2.1 million active users per month. For perspective, YouTube gets 30 million visitors per day. Go90 also has had difficulty with advertisers, as many companies are put off by the service's weak user numbers.

What will happen to the content currently in the Go90 app? Armstrong said that the current lineup would be pushed out to other distribution outlets overseen by Oath, like HuffPost and Yahoo Finance. He posits that Go90 will become a content engine rather than a standalone service.

If and when Go90 does fold, it will join NBCUniversal's Seeso app, a similar original content distribution company that tried to compete with YouTube and Netflix. It's going to take some serious firepower to knock down those reigning goliaths.

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