The rise of BeReal

It's been a big couple of weeks for BeReal. The buzzy French social media app saw itself as the main focus of a Miles Teller-led SNL sketch on the season's opening episode, and recently passed 50 million total downloads, according to new data from Sensor Tower.

🤔 How did we get here?... BeReal was founded in late 2019. The idea is simple: users can only post once a day, prompted by a daily notification delivered at random times.

After receiving the notification, users have two minutes to submit an unedited pic from their front and rear cameras. Friends’ posts are hidden until users submit their own, though a pic can still be submitted after the time period is up.

• December 2019: Launch month.
• June 2021: The company raises $30 million in funding.
• January 2022 to September 2022: BeReal goes from ~2.3 million total downloads → more than 50 million total downloads.😳

📸 The big picture: An explosion of downloads is one thing. But as anyone who works in user-acquisition will tell you, getting folks to actually use an app is a whole ‘nother beast. And even though BeReal’s daily active users have increased 2,254% since January, there are some cracks showing.

Around 9% of the app’s Android users are opening it daily – far below competitors like Instagram (39%), TikTok (29%), Facebook (27%), Snapchat (26%), YouTube (20%), and Twitter (18%).