BeReal was one of the fastest-growing apps in the world. Within a year it leapt to number 1 on the App Store, with over 100 million downloads.
It was hailed as the “anti-Instagram” that encouraged healthier social media habits and didn’t push ads down user’s throats. However, as much as these were positive attributes from a third-person point of view, these were actually extremely large disadvantages for BeReal.
With a lack of addicting feeds through which you can doom scroll, it became quite difficult for BeReal to retain its users. And, without any revenue from ads, BeReal simply was not able to sustain itself without VC funding which quickly dried up after their growth stalled.
So, BeReal was stuck accepting a lowball buyout offer just to stay alive. This video tells the story of BeReal’s explosive rise and fall and why an anti-social media app doesn’t really work in practice.