Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “BeReal – The Instagram Killer?”.
This is be real, supposedly the only honest social media app in the world and even with all the craziness that’s happening with social media right now. It is still the most fascinating thing going on having just become the number one most downloaded app in the US, Australia, Germany and many more so I decided to test it to find out what on Earth and honest social media platform actually is, and if be real, Is about to become the next big thing? The concept came about from the simple fact that most current social media platforms fake. If you go to a random person’s Instagram page, there’s a very good chance that all you’re going to see is just a highlight reel a hand, curated selection of the very best, most positive memories. That person wants to share all edited to remove even a glimpse of imperfection platforms like this set unrealistic standards, they’re bad for mental health, they’re, incredibly good at sucking all your time without you even realizing. You already know all of this. But what choice do we have? If you want to keep in touch with people now that so many of us spend so much of our Lives physically distant, you need these platforms.
That is until be real, which has a really interesting solution. Every single user of the app gets a notification once every day. When you get that notification, you have two minutes to take out your phone and click a photo, and when you do that, your phone will capture both from the front to get your face and then also from the rear to capture. What you’re doing. And this really simple idea solves a lot of current problems. For starters, This Be Real notification. It comes at a different time.
Each day the company says it’s not random, but at the same time you don’t know what that time is going to be, which already means you can’t plan your life around it. It kills this current feeling of doing things for the sole purpose of being able to post about them on social media and instead forces you to do those things, because you really want to do those things, but then also, even though everyone’s getting the notification at a Different time each day, they’re getting it at the same time as each other, which means that, when you’ve sent your photo off, you can have a quick 30 second scroll through your feed, see exactly what each of your friends are up to in that moment and you’re Caught up in my experience using this with my friends, this was the thing that shocked me, the most it’s how fast it makes socializing. I use inverted commas here because I’m not saying this is the same as spending quality time in the same room as them, but because of how much information can be conveyed by a single picture, I do think it often tells you more than having an entire texting. Conversation – and it also happens far more frequently because it has a fraction of the time commitment because there’s no chase for clout or fame on this app. You see the things that you wouldn’t otherwise get to see the mundane, regular things that no one’s ever going to post on their Instagram like how they actually really come can’t cook their recent trip to load up on mayonnaise or bought their recent pregnancy test result. Was it sounds funny because we’re not used to it, but that is authentically them.
I would say this app is adding back that layer of well. I can’t believe this is real, that social media has started to lose over the years, because it’s so easy to fake things now, which is why there are so many pages online, followed by hundreds of thousands of people that just share be reals. This wouldn’t work if it was just sharing normal, interesting photos. It’S the fact that they’d be reals that people have had to take spontaneously without planning them out which makes them authentic and therefore funny like check out this poor dude who’s just dropped his pizza. If you saw a random photo on the internet of a pizza on a floor, you’d think oh well, that’s probably been copied from Google Images, but seeing that it’s a be real means that you know this is the guy who took the photo. You can see his face and his reaction to this extremely sad occasion and what makes it more hilarious is that he’s had.
This disaster happen in front of his eyes and then at that moment his phone has gone off, demanding him to take a photo of the chaos, and so, when you’re, using this app with your friends, I think it means that when you do eventually get to see Them you’re doing so now, understanding the context of what really makes them, who they are. Your connection is deeper. It is obviously going to mean that you’re only going to want to keep your close friends on this app you’re not going to want to share the inner parts of your life with people.
You know less well, but then you could argue. That’S a benefit too because it forces you to focus on the people that matter, but if we zoom out for a minute, this is still a social media app right. So once I got used to the core mechanic of posting once a day, I started to explore it to see what other features it has and the answer is shockingly few. The app has no filters. You can’t make your skin look richer. Your belly looks Slimmer, your acne looks smoother. There are two separate tabs at my friends tab where you can see what your friends have just posted and a discover tab where you can see what random other people have just posted. But apart from that, there’s no video.
There’S no stories, there’s no direct messaging features, no light counter. No follow accounts, I mean probably the best way. To summarize how feature Rich this app is, is to show you that this is what a person’s profile looks like it’s boring boarding by Design.
It’S made like this because it’s targeted right at gen Z, the generation who are now becoming young adults – and you might be thinking well, hey, gen Z – are the ones who grew up learning how to use iPads before being able to read a map. These are the ones who have a shorter average attention span than my goldfish. How are they going to cope on an app, that’s so unstimulating, but I would say as much criticism as they do get. This is also a generation who wants to be healthier than before. They’Re more aware of eating balanced meals and not falling for overnight Solutions or fad diets. Their alcohol consumption is lower, they’re more in touch with their emotional well-being than past generations, and so it’s almost not surprising that be real is landing with them.
That has gone from 10 000 downloads last year to hit 50 million downloads, and last time I checked has over 400 000 5 star ratings. All of this is to say that I like the idea of be real and that it actually has a surprising amount going for it, but I think it’s just about to hit its biggest hurdle. So you’ve probably gathered at this point that be real, is basically trying to be the anti-instagram. The problem with that, though, is that, while Instagram might not be the best thing for the long-term mental health of the population, he does know how to be a successful business, and so there is a reason that it is the way it is.
I mean, for starters, we are living in a very insecure age, the vast majority of people, we care what others think about us and we like the idea of being only able to post our best selves. I talked to a few of my younger family members about be real and their primary feedback was. I don’t want to show my face without proper makeup and I don’t want to make it seem like my life is really boring by just showing my desk every day.
It’S a fair point, and I think, for anyone who has this kind of mindset be real, is Never Gon na land plus, as well as insecurity, there’s also a question mark over security. If you’re going to be broadcasting your whereabouts at any given point in time with the addition of geolocation 2, if you forget to turn that feature off, and then it’s also kind of inconvenient part of what makes existing social media platforms so appealing man so damaging. Is that we can use them whenever we want to whenever we’re free, whenever we feel like it, whereas I guarantee you 99 of the time that be real notification will pop up when you’re not expecting it that’s kind of what it’s designed to do. But it means that in the majority of cases, you’re not getting it in those specific Windows of time where it suits you, I’ve had it.
While I’m in bed in the bathroom riding a bike in the middle of a meditation, you can choose to post your be real late if you really have to. But then that will actually give a push notification to everyone who follows you, which is kind of inconvenient. For them, and if you are enjoying this video, then a sub to the channel would be real. I can’t not take that for the inconvenience there’s also an argument to be made that, while these over beautified highly optimized posts that people make on Instagram are unrealistic, the fact that it makes people put so much thought into their posts does make them higher quality. More interesting content than a just woken up, selfie in front of a laptop or in other words in trying to be so easy on the Creator, be real.
It’S not really prioritizing the user experience like most other social platforms do in order to make sure that you have a continuous, desirable stream of content for your users. You normally have to incentivize the creators to put in effort with either money or virality, neither of which be real has, and so it’s so basic as a viewer right now that using it kind of feels like going back from a smartphone to a dumb phone, it Requires restraint to use it over something that you know will bring you more short-term satisfaction and this links to the single most important performance metric for a social media platform retention time. There’S a reason that Instagram has every possible social media feature. You can think of.
There’S a reason: they’ve tried to make themselves the home for your direct conversations with people why they have webs of different feeds to potentially get lost in. It’S also that you spend as much time on it as possible and they can make money, whereas be real in its mission to be good, for you keeps you on the app for about a minute a day after which it gives you nothing else to look at There are no ads, there are no fees, it’s losing money right now, which is okay when you’re starting out most social medias lose money at the beginning, while they’re focusing on just growing their daily active users, but be real, has a moral dilemma that the others didn’t Have how do you make this a successful business without ruining what it stands for like if you start filling it with ads to make money? It’S going to lose its Simplicity? If you give people more interesting, camera features to make it more enjoyable, then you’ll kill the authenticity. If you start adding in stories or a home page or browse features to improve retention time, then it will no longer be the healthier alternative. It wants to be and will just feel, like a budget Facebook, you can tell that they’re trying really hard to tread that line.
They’Re experimenting with these weird real emojis that you can react to posts with, and you can comment too, but if they try and go much further, it is going to defeat the app’s entire purpose. The only way I see that they could stay true to their values, whilst also monetizing would be to make it a five dollar a month paid subscription, but that would be a Fast Track ticket to kill all existing momentum they built up and then the icing on The cake is that, even if everything goes really well for be real, it doesn’t change the fact that all they have right now is effectively one unique feature. Others could just copy it. In fact, Instagram, of course, is Instagram is already testing a feature called Candid challenges, which is basically the same thing.
They did this with stories too, which originally came from Snapchat and half killed that app in the process. So it could be a very real possibility, and so I think be real – will not be the next big social media Revolution, but I’ve never wanted to be wrong. More to find out why 5G kind of sucks that video is here and I’ll catch you there .