Who's going to be the next BeReal?

GM. This is Work "After" Work, the newsletter that acts as your passport to travel the world of trends, and today we’re heading to France where the new BeReal app began!

Happy hump day let's jump in:

• 🧑‍💻 Becoming BeReal

• 😂 Meme of the day

WHO'S BEING REAL NOWADAYS?

Tired of only seeing edited photos of everyone "living their best lives" on your socials? Want something more real? Well, you're not alone - join 75 million other people.

The founders of BeReal identified this need and created BeReal, the real social media app - no filters, no edits. That’s right, you can take off your social media mask!

You might have heard of it, probably because your friends are telling you to download it.

Once per day users get a notification to “BeReal” and post what’s going on in their lives. You have 2 minutes to open the app and post a picture of both facing cameras - no editing allowed.

If you're at the grocery store well.. looks like you'll be taking a selfie with that head of broccoli in your cart (not glamorous but that's the point!)

Since launching in 2020, BeReal was just a wee little lad trying to compete with the big boys. In 2022, however, it hit puberty and is now taking users from Instagram.

April was a big month with almost 8 million downloads. 6 months later they were at over 50M.

Fast forward to today and they're sitting at 74 million monthly active users and 20 million daily users. Talk about growth! 🤯

Why did it take off?From what I can find, they pushed marketing hard at colleges and it's when the app actually became bearable. Lags and bugs created a bad user experience that crushed them in the beginning, but now it looks like they've mostly fixed those (I've tested it!)

Not to mention growing a social media app is extremely hard - so what caused this sudden growth?It's clear, people want a more authentic experience on social media. Even with this app being quote "stupid & laggy" (I've read this from at least 25 reviews) it's absolutely booming with downloads and investment money.

Earlier this year, the app raised $60 million in its Series B round pushing its valuation to $587 million.

Google tells the same story:

Source: Google Trends

It's not all sunshine and rainbows though, growth is good but it comes with stretch marks and users still have a laundry list of critiques, like:

• letting people post after the 2 minute window (what's the frickin point?)

• the discover page shows private BeReals to the world - so much for only your friends seeing that embarrassing photo of you

•  it shows the location of where you took your pic within a 3 mile radius - BeReal, more like "RealLocator" - welcome stalkers

So what's the big idea here?

This authenticity trend is a lot bigger than just BeReal. Do you know how many people use social media? You're looking at a total addressable market of 4.7 billion people worldwide. 

That's a lot of people. BeReal is only capturing 1% of that and has crazy numbers. You can do the same.

Don't reinvent the wheel. BeReal has already proved it works.

Besides fixing the critiques users currently have, here's a list of unique tweaks and features you can implement:

• provide a video option - this could be the app itself. Video is more addictive (it sucks but it's true)

• make a better user experience - this app is extremely basic and bland

• niche down - consider one for hikers, swimmers, bikers, or runners

MEME OF THE DAY

That's all I got for ya today folks!!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.