29 jul 2022 om 05:31 | Update: 3 minuten geleden
BeReal has been around for two years, but has suddenly gained enormous popularity in recent months. The app markets itself as a sort of anti-Instagram. Without perfect pictures, but with pictures that show reality. Even if it’s a bit boring and ugly.
By: Rutger OttoFrench developer Alexis Barreyat released BeReal in January 2020, but it took a while for the app to reach a large audience. At the time of writing, it ranks #1 in the top list of free apps in the App Store. BeReal is also high on the charts in the Google Play Store. The exact number of users is unknown. Several market analysts estimate the number of downloads of the app at 20 to 30 million worldwide.
With BeReal, users receive a notification at the same time every day at any time, after which they are given two minutes to take a photo. Sometimes there is a specific challenge in the notification, but usually users decide for themselves what they record.
The app shoots at the same time as the front and back cameras on your phone. This not only provides a picture of what the photographer sees, but also how the photographer reacts to it.
People can still take pictures after those two minutes. It will then be added what time the user was with it. If multiple attempts have been made to take a photo, that will also be reported. Photos of friends are also only visible if you have shared a photo yourself.
Fleeting photos of reality
The app consists of two parts. A page contains photos of friends, but you can also view images of strangers via the ‘Disovery’ tab.
If you take a quick look, you will see that the quality of messages is different than on Instagram or Facebook. They are often fleeting photos, where composition doesn’t matter that much. For example, you see someone who is just cooking, someone behind a laptop or you see the view from an office window. Thanks to the selfies that come with it, you always get to know what mood the maker was in when the photo was taken.
The time limit ensures that people do not quickly arrange a nice lighting or look for an inspiring environment. Also selfies are usually not perfect. Users should embrace this idea, believes BeReal, which did not just choose its name. Just pulling a crooked face in the photo is not bad at all. And there are no filters. “They are not there in real life,” the makers write in the app stores.
And another warning from the developer: BeReal doesn’t make you famous. “If you want to become an influencer, stick to TikTok and Instagram.”