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Is this up-and-coming app a temporary success or is it here to stay?
BeReal is a photo-sharing app that was launched in December 2019. It was invented by former GoPro employee Alexis Barreyat along with Kevin Perreau. The concept of the app is to take a picture simultaneously with the front and back camera (with no ability to add a filter) at a random time of day when a notification is sent. This encourages the users to be true and „real” with their friends and allows them to share a moment of their day with others.
The app started to gain fame slowly from the start of 2021. The growth of the app came mostly from word-to-mouth advertisement, the more friends you have on the app the more fun it will be. Another unique technique used to boost the popularity of the app was the usage of college ambassadors. They were invited to promote the app across their campus for small gratification which allowed BeReal to ultimately grow in the United States. This was a huge step forward because the app started to be recognized by new investors. Already in June company Andreessen Horowitz invested $30 million in BeReal.
As of today, according to research from Sensor Tower, BeReal has seen a rise of active users by 2253% since January 2022, it also reached 53 million installs worldwide across the App Store and Google Play. However, only 9% of the users on Android open the app every day as of the third quarter of 2022. This percentage compared to the apps such as Instagram (39%), TikTok (29%) or Twitter (18%) is relevantly low. In most cases, active users are a better indicator to evaluate if the app stays successful rather than downloads since some people might just download an app out of curiosity. It must be taken into account that the majority of people in the United States use IOS instead of android therefore some statistics may be inaccurate.
In the past month, the rapid growth and innovative concept of the app made it recognizable to the competition. In July Instagram started to experiment with its Dual Camera future. Moreover, recently TikTok adopted its new future TikTok Now which is the knockoff version of BeReal. The ideas aren’t patents so BeReal can’t do much about being copied. The app can only hope to keep up with its users and their demands and some wonder whether it will stand the test of time or will the leading apps take initiative.
I think that BeReal might have a problem staying successful. The percentage of daily active users is a very important factor that can indicate the direction that the app might go. The current 9% of daily active users might not be enough for the app to maintain its hype. I have been using this app for the last couple of weeks and I have observed that users over time are beginning to be less active. I think that because of the randomness of the time when an application asks you to take a photo, it is hard for people to get into the habit of using it every day. Moreover, a huge problem that BeReal has to face is being copied by other bigger apps. With TikTok Now already implemented, it will be only harder for BeReal to gain a new audience. It will also be harder to introduce subscriptions because the competition does it for free.
Furthermore, as of now, BeReal is not making any money and the support of investors is crucial for its development. It is not an uncommon procedure; apps such as Facebook or Snapchat also first gained their user base and only later introduced advertising. It is very probable that in the future BeReal might need to add in-app ads or subscriptions to generate profit or even survive. I do not think that this will be a huge problem because users are used to seeing ads on a daily basis, so it probably would not bother most but it is still a thing to consider.
On the other hand, BeReal has a high chance of adding new, never-done-before features and updates, which will help the app stay relevant and generate more users on a daily basis. In my opinion, the fact that BeReal employees are younger will also influence the performance of the app as they are aware of what is considered trendy and ‘in’ at the moment, amongst the younger generation.
What do you think will happen with BeReal? Will it stay successful or slowly become irrelevant?
References:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/22/bereal-hype-or-hit-what-to-know-about-the-gen-z-photo-sharing-app-climbing-the-charts/
https://www.ft.com/content/7e559c39-2063-45ca-af2c-4ce013ba6382
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/bereal-tops-53m-installs-but-only-9-open-the-app-daily-estimates-claim/
https://productmint.com/bereal-business-model-how-does-bereal-make-money/
