One thing I like about the "new" Hipstamatic app is its BeReal-like feature that challenges me to take a picture at a set time. Unlike BeReal, it's not the only feature of the app and it does it in a way that feels more organic by giving me a reason + more time.
Seeing that made me think back to BeReal, the app that made on-command picture taking popular last year and to see if it ever evolved beyond the one feature.
It didn't and the popularity it had is long gone, but while the trend looks grim the reality isn't.
Let's go back to the beginning. BeReal's popularity started rising 2021. Monthly downloads grew from a monthly average of under 1,000 in 2020 to more than 200,000 in May and 300K in December of 2021, according to our estimates. Growth didn't stop there.
Between January and September of 2022, BeReal's monthly downloads grew from around 600K to more than 14M in September. Yes, downloads grew more than 13x in 9 months. Aaaaand, the app itself hasn't really evolved.
And worse, it didn't find a way to make money!
September was BeReal's peak, and a downward trend followed. By December, downloads dropped to 6M and in March of 2023 that number got cut in half again to just 3M.
Now...
This all sounds like a big missed opportunity, and it probably really is, but let's think about this - an app that commands you to take a selfie once a day with a 2-minute timer is getting 3M downloads per month. That's still incredible.
Compare that to Hipstamatic, a full-fledged camera app with filters and features and a subscription and 22K downloads since the relaunch.
BeReal got those same number of downloads in about 6 hours.
I'm not sure what the team running BeReal is doing right now, but if they try, there's a lot more they can get from what they've built.
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