All The Buzz About BeReal.
⚠️It's Time to BeReal⚠️
I decided to do my social listening blog on the new up-incoming app BeReal. This social platform sends a random notification at different times every day warning their users that they have two minutes left to "BeReal". They open the app and it captures whatever they're doing in the moment on the front and back camera. Their users can then post their "BeReal" to their feed for friends to see. You are unable to see what your friends have posted unless you have also posted that day. But once it's time to "BeReal" again the next day, the previous photo is saved onto a personal account that only you have access to. Once posted your friends can then "react" to your post with a picture or comment as well. The companies value proposition is "Your Friends For Real" which perfectly sums up the apps entire purpose. To break the mold in social media through exposing what people are up to at any given time in the day. Which in turn, dissolves the "perfect life" persona so often displayed on social platforms like Instagram. And with this revolutionary use of social media people have a lot to say about BeReal and what they are doing for the social media world as a whole.
(@elliedusseliernon TikTok comment section)
One article written in the New York Times Magazine by Sophie Haigney states, "There is a tiny bit of joy when the notification comes at an opportune moment — when I’m playing softball, or at a concert, or getting drinks with friends". Haigney seems to enjoy the glimpses that she gets into her friends lives that wouldn't be existent without BeReal, but she also has shares some criticism. "What you see on BeReal isn’t necessarily any less self-conscious, or more genuine, than what you see anywhere else on the internet". Haigney goes on to point out the flaws in this "real" media. For example you are allowed to retake your photo as many times as you want in a two minute time period before sharing. However your friends are able to see how many times you retake a photo which typically makes people use their first or second take. Another flaw pointed out by Haigney is that users aren't obligated to post right when receiving the notification. Meaning that they can wait until they're doing or are somewhere cooler than where they were at the time of the notification.
Since the apps launch in 2020 its popularity has only expanded. So much so that it has turned into a meme on other social media platforms like TikTok and Twitter. With the #BeReal at 2.4 billion uploads on TikTok people are starting to share their awkwardly timed BeReals. Multiple trends have been popular across the app over the last few months. Other trends involving the app on Twitter include (awful) captions like "what if BeReal existed during 9/11" and dark humor tweets like that. The app however has received so much hype, good and bad, the last few months that SNL did a skit integrating the overall joke of BeReal on an episode two weeks ago featuring Miles Teller and Mikey Day linked below. This skit gives a complete rundown of the app and its purpose within the span of two minutes and thirty seconds with an intense and comedic tone throughout. According to Abby Sklencar for Online Optimism, "as of October 2022, BeReal has been installed over 53 million times worldwide. This is a significant increase from August, when it had around 28 million, July, when it had been downloaded 20 million times, and even more so since April 2022, when it had only been downloaded 7.67 million times". I unfortunately couldn’t find any sort of data referring to downloads after the release of the skit on Saturday Night Live but, I'm sure it was significant considering the previous steady increase in prelacy worldwide. In a recent Morning Brew article by Sherry Qin briefly going over her thoughts on the app, she mentions early on SNL's skit about BeReal. "But since I wasn’t robbing banks, I found that authenticity got surprisingly boring after two weeks, since not all BeReal notifications find its users in the middle of crime or similarly exciting situations". Again going to show another flaw or complaint with the app, not everyone is doing something even worth sharing with people every single day of the week every week.
The app does have its own Twitter and TikTok accounts that they use to respond to people's comments and videos especially under the #BeReal. They encourage people to share their BeReals on other platforms and publish tweets asking what time they should post the notification for that day. Personally I think this is excellent marketing skills. They’re promoting their own app through other social media platforms and they are getting people to talk about it. The good or bad content that is posted involving the app by its users, BeReal creators will make comments like, "yessss", or, "omg show us" providing people with an interactive online persona that they can check in on or look forward to receiving a comment from. Which, in a sense, is newsjacking because they are taking other people's pictures and commenting or promoting them for their own benefit. They do have an Instagram account however it does not have any posts. Again feeding into their value proposition of "realistic" social media.
This app being as new and exciting as it is, is also very specific to a certain group of people. Your typical user of BeReal is more than likely someone in a younger generation that is somewhat tech savvy and is "with" the trends. Which, in turn, isolates the other huge majority of the population that is older and didn't grow up with technology, providing a pretty big generational gap that creates a tough marketing challenge that this company is now facing. They did however tweet, "add your grandparents on BeReal if you can, you'll thank us later", which somewhat tackles that challenge and encourages their younger audience to share this app with their older relatives.
I chose to do this blog post on BeReal because I've had the app downloaded since March of this year and was curious to learn more about it. I learned the positive and negative reviews of the app as well as challenges and successes the company has faced the last few months. But if I somehow landed a marketing job at BeReal I would add more "real" features that they say they promote. For example I wouldn't let people retake their pictures, and I would up the time to maybe ten minutes and make the users post within that specific time period and not at all the. rest of the day. As well as providing more advertising for themselves besides comments and reposts. Maybe even begin posting their daily BeReal takes to places like Instagram and Facebook so older or unfamiliar potential users can become aware of what the app even is. But anyways add me on BeReal @tay.smalley :).
(My sister and I at a Giants game in July)
Sources:
https://bere.al/en
https://www.onlineoptimism.com/blog/bereal-stats-app-figures-data-be-real-numbers-to-know/#installed
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2022/10/17/let-s-be-real-about-bereal
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