An Update on BeReal (and a BeReal Reading List)
BeReal keeps growing, but can it become a profitable business?
This is a follow-up to a July 2022 post I wrote on social media app BeReal.
In the original post, I argued that even though BeReal presents itself as a social media app that understands social media’s problems, the app still carries a lot of problems typical to social media apps. Mainly, BeReal is obnoxious, distracting, and time-sucking. Then I argue that the best way to be authentic is to understand what we want (connection, community, acceptance) and relentlessly ask if apps (or any technology really) help us get what we want:
“BeReal wants you to believe it will make you authentic and less anxious about what you post. But the app is just another ball to juggle. It’s another time vampire, another virtual job.”
I stopped using the app entirely shortly after I made that post. But I thought I’d check in and see how BeReal is doing, 3 months later.
How’s it Going?
BeReal now has a market valuation of €600 million, and has an estimated 20 million daily active users (DAU).
The company got this valuation because they completed another round of venture capital funding. It’s also reaching mainstream awareness. In October, it was featured in President Biden’s Twitter, which was kinda weird, and also an SNL skit, which was actually pretty funny, because Bowen Yang is a national treasure.
Even though BeReal’s reach is growing, it’s still unclear how BeReal is supposed to become a profitable business.
BeReal has heaps of money from venture capital investors, but no actual revenue. This alone isn’t unusual. Some apps have made the jump from venture-capital investment to self-sufficient business. Language-learning app Duolingo spent years surviving off venture capital money alone, before finally finding a revenue model that worked for them (the “freemium” model). Duolingo made $250 million in revenue in 2021.
The premise of Duolingo’s freemium model is, “Here’s something you want (i.e. French lessons). We’ll give it to you, but there are ads. Pay us and we’ll get rid of the ads and thrown in some extra perks.” For BeReal, a social media app, it’s trickier to figure out what you can throw behind a paywall that people will actually want to pay for.
BeReal could make it so you have to pay if you want more than a certain number of friends in your friends list, but how many people would benefit from that? BeReal could make it so if you pay them, you can post more than once a day, but that undermines the whole point of the app. BeReal’s own restrictions, the thing that makes it so intriguing, also makes it difficult to figure out how they can monetize.
Even the very idea of advertisements seems to run counter to BeReal’s philosophy. Imagine you’re scrolling through your BeReal feed, seeing the “authentic” daily lives of your friends, when you see a sponsored BeReal ad from Raising Cane’s. BeReal’s own app store description touts the app as “your chance to show your friends who you really are,” but it’s harder to find out who my friends really are if I have to sift for their posts in a sea of Bed Bath and Beyond ads. At the moment, branded posts and ads aren’t allowed on BeReal (but that hasn’t stopped brands from trying to sneak them in).
Finally, if BeReal throws the entire app behind a paywall, I don’t think that would end well. Other apps are already starting to copy BeReal, and making BeReal subscription-only would make the free clones more appealing. If people can do the same thing on two apps, one paid and one free, they will flock to the free one. It’s also very difficult to convince people to pay for something that was once free. Red Cross used to give free donuts and coffee to veterans. Then they started charging for the donuts. Veterans, 70 years later, still have not forgiven Red Cross. People can adjust to a price going up or down. But going from free to paid is a categorial change, and that’s tough to adjust to. It’s hard to convince people to pay for something they expect to get for free.
Maybe I sound cynical. But I don’t hate BeReal. I have no vendetta against them. As much as I personally dislike it, I’ll admit there’s a chance they succeed and become a profitable business. I just don’t quite understand how that will happen without them either alienating their users, or undermining the principles the app was built upon.
The Social Media Reading List
The original July 2022 post was first conceived as a small post about why I didn’t like using BeReal. By the time it was finished, it had ballooned into a much larger post about how we use technology in our daily lives. Oops. I ended up reading and re-reading a lot on these subjects, so I want to share with you a small reading list of stuff that helped me write the original post.
“Gen Z’s new favorite app,” Sara Fischer, Axios - Gives a lot of good data and metrics on BeReal.
“BeReal and the Fantasy of an Authentic Online Life,” R.E. Hawley, New Yorker - If you read anything in this section, read this. Hawley makes good points I didn’t address in my original post, like how switching from Instagram to BeReal is really just swapping one kind of performative persona for another.
(SOFT PAYWALL) “This New Social App Is Boring, in a Good Way,” John Herrman, The New York Times - Mostly praises BeReal, and gave me insight on the kind of positive things people have to say about the app. I disagree with most of this article.
How to do Nothing - Jenny Odell
What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly
Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport
“On the Shortness of Life” - Seneca
One Last Recommendation
Instead of downloading BeReal, I highly recommend “Bee Real.”
Thanks for reading.