BeReal Climbs to the Top of Social Media Apps

Quick. Two minutes left to capture a BeReal and see what your friends are up to. BeReal is a new social media app that quickly became the number one most downloaded social media app on the app store.

This app has a different concept than most traditional social media apps. Everyday, a notification is sent to users at a different time, alerting them that they have two minutes to take a live action photo of what they are doing. If a user takes a picture after these two minutes, they are reported as late. Users are also not allowed to see their friends daily pictures until they have posted. After posting, friends can send each other reaction pictures to each other’s posts.

In its app store description, BeReal claims that it is “your chance to show your friends who you really are for once” and that it is for “Real life without filters”. The app proudly states that it is for showing who you truly are day-to-day, instead of just at your perfectly aesthetic moments. 

These claims, along with the new concept, set BeReal apart from other social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. While BeReal has users post a daily picture that focuses on daily activities, users of these apps may post a variety of different types of photos as often or little as they like. Instagram states in the appstore that it is for “curating life’s highlights” and “discovering new content, information, ideas, and brands”. These statements resemble those made by other similar social platforms, but are very different from the new app BeReal.

While the definition of social media is the means of interactions among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas, how social media sites carry out this definition changes, creating brand new apps and ideas, such as BeReal.