Can BeReal withstand Zuckerberg’s efforts to copy it?
Launched in 2020, BeReal, the French-created social network, is enjoying growth in user numbers that coincides with a growing weariness of Instagram, now plagued by tiresome advertising every two or three posts and video formats that not all of its users like. In fact, searches for the app are growing consistently, and media coverage reflects growing interest.
BeReal is very simple: once a day, at an unspecified time, you get a notification from the app to take a photo, which uses both the front and rear cameras, and tries to show your face and whatever you’re doing at the time. The idea is equally simple: get a real picture of what your friends — or other people, if they choose to make it public — are doing. In addition, you can replay your BeReal’s on a calendar, which is supposed to summarize a sort of timeline of your life.
There are some variations around this initial idea of a certain search for spontaneity versus more invasive models like Instagram: since the notification does not expire, there is some flexibility in deciding which moment you want to capture and publish a late BeReal. To try to incentivize posting, you can’t see what your friends post until you do. Simply put, a minor innovation on traditional image posting networks, created by former GoPro employee Alexis Barreyat in 2020, and after a couple of rounds…
