BeReal recognize BeReal?

BeReal's weekly downloads are down ~95% from its 2022 highs, according to a recent tweet from venture capitalist Sasha Kaletsky. Which begs the question: is BeReal about to BeDone?

📈 Let’s back up: BeReal was 2022's wunderkind app. It won Apple's App Of The Year award, soared to popularity with over 50 million installs in the first nine months of last year alone, and inspired hundreds of think pieces asking if the app's "no likes, no followers, no ads" ethos foretold the end of social media as we know it.

📱 The current state of affairs:

• The app has over 70 million total downloads since launching in late 2019.
• 20 million of those people were using it daily as of October, per TechCrunch (for context: about three years after Facebook was launched, the site boasted 20 million monthly active users).
• Many BeReal users are reporting consistent glitching and crashing though; in July 2022, there was a 254% increase in negative reviews for the app, per Apptopia.

👀 Looking ahead… One big business question remains for the ad-free BeReal: how will it make money? Subscriptions, possibly, per the Financial Times (paywalled).

But after raising a $60 million funding round that valued the startup at ~$600 million sometime last year, revenue doesn’t seem to be too top of mind for its team. Per the company’s own website: “You may be wondering if we’ll have ads or how we think about monetizing the app. First, we want to stick around for as long as you’ll have us, but working with brands is not our priority.”