Will Authentic Social Media Replace Instagram?

Ariel Ariel
6/24/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #119 - That's a Lot of Money!. Check out the full article for more insights.


All this talk of NGL reminded me of the overnight success right before it, which was another twist on the traditional social media that's really starting to feel stale...

Remember BeReal? If you don't, it's an app that helps teens be authentic by alerting them at a random time to take a picture and share it with friends. No filters. No poses. Well, maybe poses. My friends aren't using it, so I don't know...

BeReal took to the top of the App Store just a couple of months ago, and like most other overnight successes, eventually faded away, giving TikTok and other household names their top chart spots.

Where is BeReal now? Are teens still trying to be "authentic"? Should Meta be concerned?

Well...

Yes, it looks like BeReal is still popular. In fact, it's gotten more popular in the last few weeks.

According to our estimates, last week was BeReal's highest week of downloads to date! The novel photo app made its way into 1,250,000 mobile devices globally. That's a bit higher than its last peak, which came in April.

The majority of downloads came from the US and the UK, where the App Store earned about 5x the downloads. It's interesting to see how unpopular this "concept" is in countries that traditionally drive the big downloads like India. I don't expect that to change, but if it does, you'll know BeReal can become a serious contender. Which I don't expect to happen.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.

Tagged: #social-media

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