Let’s BeReal… nobody wants to curate every moment for Instagram. That’s fueling the growth of BeReal, a new “unfiltered” social app that’s gaining traction with college students (1M+ downloads last month alone). How it works:
- Whatever you’re doing at 2:30 pm… is what your friends see. Every day, BeReal users are prompted to take a selfie and front-facing pic at a random time. Users have two minutes to take their filter-free pics, and can’t post more.
- The anti-Instagram: BeReal doesn’t allow “likes” and discourages “lurking” by making users post before seeing their friends’ pics. Instead of sushi in Tulum, you get Cheeto hands in bed.
Not the first Facebook alternative… Lots of upstarts have challenged Meta’s social supremacy with features like photo tagging, stories, and live audio. FB kept its crown by buying them (Insta), copying them (Snap/TikTok), or watching ’em fade (Clubhouse). But now FB faces a more fundamental challenge: growing skepticism of its engagement-driven algorithms.
- Algo-anxiety: A WSJ investigation last year revealed that FB knew Insta’s algorithm was linked to depression, anxiety, and eating disorders in teens.
- Shrinking base: FB’s total users declined last quarter for the first time, and the number of young adults on FB has been falling since 2019.
- Reversing course: This month, Insta launched a chronological feed, a rare step back from algo-fueled ordering — though it can’t be set as default. Twitter recently made a similar move.
It’s easy to rip off a new feature… but it’s harder to overhaul an entire biz model. Even if BeReal is just a fad, it points to an existential problem for the social-media incumbents: younger users are gravitating toward platforms with fewer features focused on their friends. But for social giants that rely on algorithm-powered ad revenue, fewer features may mean fewer advertisers.