Anti-Instagram app BeReal takes top spot on Apple despite crashes

SOCIAL media app BeReal, dubbed the anti-Instagram, has soared in popularity in recent weeks despite numerous complaints that it crashes at a critical moment. 

The app, which requires users of the platform to take a photo within a 2-minute window each day, often glitches when everyone tries to upload their spontaneous pictures at once. Failure to upload your image within the designated timeframe leads to a “late” label of public shame. 

Far from deterring users, however, the app took the top spot in the US on Apple Inc.’s App Store for 3 days this week. It had 1.7 million downloads in the week of Jul 11, the biggest weekly gain ever, digital analytics platform Sensor Tower noted.

It’s common, especially among social-media companies, that when demand suddenly surges the infrastructure comes under strain, said Arun Lakshmanan, an associate professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management. “The faster an application is able to ramp up, the more likely it is to become popular and stable,” he said.

BeReal’s boom echoes the early success of Instagram and Twitter, when platform glitches were frequent because of an overload of users. Those apps adapted and survived, but at a time when so many social media apps are competing for people’s attention, BeReal still has to prove it can be more than a passing fad.

The French app has been around since 2020, when it was launched by Alexis Barreyat, who had previously worked at at GoPro Inc. BeReal said it received US$30 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners and New Wave, with participation from DST Global and others. Insider reported that BeReal is raising US$85 million in fresh capital, led by DST Global, that would value the company at US$600 million.

After gaining popularity in France, the app started taking off among college-aged users in the US earlier this year. Its appeal, said many users, is its intentional opposition to the ultra-curated aesthetic of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. 

On BeReal, people post only once daily, prompted by a push notification instructing them that it’s “Time to BeReal,” bracketed by two yellow warning sign emojis. With one click the app takes 2 photos, one from the front and back cameras simultaneously.

But for many people, this is where things go wrong. They might have to close and reboot the app multiple times, or if they are able to take a photo, it will take too long time to upload, resulting with the dreaded “late” label. Users can’t see what their friends post until they have posted themselves, so the glitches keep them from using the app.

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During the first 2 weeks of July, there was a 254 per cent increase in the number of negative reviews for BeReal for performance and bugs, said data intelligence platform Apptopia. In May, reviews that cited “negative” or “mixed” performance and “bugs” made up 56.4 per cent of total reviews. BeReal declined to comment. 

Despite the technical frustrations, people keep coming back for their daily post. BeReal users kept with the app at higher rates than the top 10 social apps, said data.ai, a consumer and market data platform. For the month of May, users who are still with the app after 7 days is almost 50 per cent at BeReal, compared with 37 per cent for other apps. After 30 days, those numbers level out at 35 per cent and 34 per cent.

Omer Cayir, a 22-year-old law student in London, also posts to BeReal every day. He started using it in April, and after a couple of weeks, saw glitches like the caption or whole post deleting. For about a month, he wouldn’t get the notification that it was time to post. He said it was frustrating, but he was happy to deal with it because he was still in the honeymoon phase with the app.

“There was a week or so where it felt a bit like a chore,” he said, “but the app luckily in the nick of time started to fix itself and started to get more exciting again.”

Not every user is enamoured. Ben Boehlert, a 22-year-old research assistant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said half the time when he gets the “Time to BeReal” notification, he doesn’t bother, and the other half he tries and fails to post. Many days, he doesn’t see the notification, because it’s in the middle of the work day.

“It’s made it kind of impossible to use,” he said, “which is unfortunate, because it’s cool.“

Lakshmanan said when people talk to their friends about the app it creates a network effect that can help the app take off. But the platform needs to invest in making it usable, so people’s behaviour becomes ingrained, the professor said. 

With the infusion of capital and “a little more investment” in the product and infrastructure, the glitches should get ironed out in time, Lakshmanan said. “Now, whether this will go the way of Facebook or Twitter, that’s an open question.” BLOOMBERG