Social media platform BeReal has topped more than 50 million installs from users around the world but just nine per cent of users open the app every day.
The low usage comes according to market intelligence company Sensor Tower with the company claiming that BeReal’s usage trails other established social media platforms—in a previous analysis, Instagram led the category with 39 per cent of installs opening the app every day, while TikTok placed second with 29 per cent.
BeReal gives users a daily half-hour window to capture a photo on their front and rear camera simultaneously, hoping to capture actual lived reality, rather than the more polished feeds familiar to Instagram users, for example.
Despite launching in December 2019, it wasn’t until this year that BeReal experienced a surge in adoption, according to Sensor Tower, with installs increasing each month during 2022. In September, the app saw approximately 14.7 million installs, up 20 per cent month-over-month from 12.3 million in August.
Since March, the United States represented the majority of each month’s new installs, followed by the United Kingdom at No. 2. However, this changed in September when Brazil overtook the U.K. as the second largest market, accounting for a little more than 1 million of the app’s installs that month.
However, Sensor Tower thinks that BeReal may have an opportunity to increase the percentage of power users it has as the app is growing its monthly active users at a steady clip. Indexed against January, BeReal’s worldwide monthly active users in September were up 2,254 per cent, and its usage climbed consistently in each of the intervening months.
Competition may be on the horizon as Instagram is reportedly testing an “IG Candid” feature while Snapchat has already rolled out a Dual Camera feature mirroring BeReal’s use of both cameras.
