BeReal Reports 5 Million Increase in Worldwide Users

BeReal, the app that aims to turn the norms of photo sharing social media apps on its head, has reported that worldwide users have increased by 5 million. This was in response to some reports that have suggested that monthly active users were on the wane in the last year.

The BeReal app encourages users to share snaps of their life that are not curated and don’t have a filter. It does this by sending a user a message once a day telling them ‘it’s time to BeReal’. Users then only have 2 minutes to capture a front and back picture from their phone, one they can not edit or tweak. This leads to more authentic posts that show people’s lives as they are, rather than carefully curated and manufactured. 

Launched in 2019, the French based app had a big upturn in user numbers in 2022 – growing to 20 million users. However – it has been reported by ‘SimilarWeb’ that the number of users has dropped to 16 million in August of this year. Though numbers seem to still be growing in France according to the website. BeReal have disputed this however and told TechRadar that such estimates are off, and true numbers show continued growth. The company reports it now has 25 million active users worldwide.

While the company in 2022 raised $60 million, it has done fairly little on the marketing front. And that is something that seems to be about to change, with the company’s first marketing campaign and push set to take place this year. Julian Hislop, Head of Field Marketing Strategy at BeReal said: “We’re now in a place where we’re finally comfortable with the platform offering. We’re able to do new things like develop new features and think about really fun, innovative brand marketing campaigns.”

In August, BeReal launched a number of new features that made the social discovery aspect of the app stronger. Users can now see the posts of friends of friends for example, and messaging was added to the platform. If BeReal’s numbers are anything to go by, this seems to have helped continue to grow the app’s user base.