If TikTok has surpassed – in numbers and interactions – a seemingly unreachable behemoth like Instagram, some speculate that the new social networking site that is hotting up in the States, BeReal, could monopolise attention by replacing TikTok.
We witnessed the birth, growth and decline of the first social networking site in history, Facebook, when our parents started appearing in the ranks of those commenting on our photos, sometimes bringing a little embarrassment mixed with a lot of tenderness.
And this gave way to a definitive generational change: the younger generation did not create an account on Fb, preferring instead Instagram, which is less theoretical, less controversial and above all not populated by boomers, compared to its predecessor.
Instagram, with time, took on a drift of appearance and fiction, exasperating the ostentation at all costs of the Instagrammer life, the feverish race for likes and followers.
So it was the turn of TikTok, which with its claim ‘Make Your Day’, wanted to delineate the immediacy of social and the intent to share users’ days, even with a certain naïve spirit.
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What makes the new platform so different from its predecessors is that it only allows you to post once a day, at a time set by the app, each day different.
You receive a notification from the app with directions to post a live video or photo: in two minutes, which is the time to be on social, you can actually show what you are doing; but there is more.
BeReal activates your phone’s dual camera, front and rear, and the two photos you take are posted simultaneously; if you don’t like what you’re posting, you can retake it, but the app will tell other subscribers how ‘real’ you were, in other words, how many times the photo was taken.
The platform is literally blowing up in the US, downloaded about 30 million times since its release, a record.
In France and England it is depopulating and also in Italy, the response is super positive.
The average age of users belongs to Gen Z, driven by curiosity to understand what it is all about at the moment.
The strong point of the new social network is that it has no filters and limited time available to stay online, in total contrast to all the other apps, which with more or less explicit ploys, make users stay connected as long as possible, stealing time from other things.
BeReal prefers authentic photos or videos to images that have been remade a thousand times and modified with filters of all kinds, already deserving the appellation ‘the anti-Instagram of social media’; while the headline reads explicitly:
“BeReal is real life. And real life has no filters”.
Could this be the beginning of a revolution aimed at authenticity on social?
We’ll see, but we already like the basic philosophy, what do you think?
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