A new photo-sharing app is taking Gen Z by storm – but what is BeReal and can it offer an alternative to the likes of Instagram and TikTok?
BeReal was born in France and has surged more than 300% in popularity since the turn of the year.
As the name suggests, the app aims to scrape away the phoney filters and photoshoots that can go hand in hand with the more established platforms.
Users are sent a notification once a day informing them that it is ‘time to BeReal’ – giving them a maximum of two minutes to take a picture and upload it to their followers.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly explained what its all about.
“This is the app that is looking to scrape away a lot of the falseness, a lot of the overthinking, a lot of the filters that go on online and they want you, the user, to ‘BeReal,’” she said.
“I feel about 900 years old because I went on the app and I don’t get it.
“The idea is you download the app and everybody gets a prompt at a different time of the day to upload a photograph within two minutes.
“It is a photograph of the back camera and the front camera – so if it was me now, it would show that I’m in a radio studio talking to other people in the studio.
“So, there are photos of people in the canteen in their American high schools having their lunch and things like that. The idea is you only have two minutes to fulfil the prompt and that way, you don’t have time to pose your body in a certain way or do your makeup for the photo.”
"Dull as dishwater"
While the app is certainly a novel concept, Jess was less than impressed with the final results.
“I just find it dull as dishwater to scroll through or swipe through when you’re looking at all these pictures,” she said.
“I just think the interesting is like, what’s the point? Once you look up your photographs, I scanned through the people I’m following today and I couldn’t pretend to care about any of them.”
BeReal
She said the app is surging in popularity right now – but it’s hard to tell where it will be in six months’ time.
“I don’t know if it’s here to stay,” she said. “I think it’s one of these trends that comes along … Gen Z are notorious for jumping from trend to trend, it’s very hard to get their attention.
“This has their attention right now. I don’t know if it will still be here in six months because I don’t know how it is monetised and again, I don’t know what the point of it is.”
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