what works well:
- network effect—your experience improves when other people join, you want your friends on there
- forced participation through push notifications. If you don’t participate, you don’t get to use the app (by not being able to see anyone’s content)
- forced intimacy through the prompt. Most people aren’t comfortable taking selfies or providing snapshots into their everyday lives (and especially when under pressure from a ticking countdown). The ability to influence human behavior and social media norms is a valuable thing here
- leveraging trends around authenticity and the growing dislike of carefully curated content
- simple UX
- acts as a visual diary in the way that it captures you at spontaneous times of the day. The calendar feature feels strategic (content timeline)
- one type of media. Imagery with the same format for everyone. You know exactly what to expect visually - one front facing picture, one back facing
- social component (liking/commenting/friending) but also a discovery tab
I’ve noticed discovery being an increasingly important thing on social apps
- allows you to add and keep up with your friends in a new (and intimate) way
what could be cool:
- create new prompts still pushed to everyone simultaneously (e.g. take a picture of your pet)
BeReal brought users into “one time” and it would be cool to apply this idea to other prompts to have “one conversation”
- introduce new media types — expand beyond just pictures to allow for notes, videos, etc.
- lean into the memories/timeline
I’ve been writing/thinking a lot about “content timelines” or how we now go to look at our pictures to remember where we were at a given time. I think that an app really leaning into a visual diary could be cool and functional
I also despise that IG’s highlights always begin with the first loaded media, which forces the user to click all the way through the highlight to get to the most recent content… so from a UX perspective, it would make more sense if the first content that appears on a profile is that user’s most recently published, and as your thumb from right to left, you navigate through posts until you reach the first (and oldest) post of that profile.
- lean into becoming a social network, lean into discoverability
they could also borrow streaks from snap aka “never missed a pic streak” which would get people using the app at wild and inappropriate times (which is pretty fun)
Hard to tell if BeReal raised a $30m series A because of its insane user growth rates that I only see increasing in the next few months, or because these motocross founders actually have a real vision. Time will tell!