BeReal photo app explores paid features to avoid advertising

Photo-sharing app BeReal is adopting in-app payments for using extra features to avoid Instagram-style advertising as the French startup faces technical glitches caused by the massive surge in popularity among Gen Z users this summer.

BeReal has become very popular with teenagers and college students in the US and Europe, with a focus on capturing an authentic snapshot at a specific moment, without the editing or filters that are common on rivals Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

The app went from 10,000 daily active users just over a year ago to over 15 million today, beating internal targets. Analysts estimate it will reach tens of millions of people by the end of the year.

“Tons of apps find users, but few manage to keep them. It’s fascinating how this one manages to retain users. […] First class,” said Jean de La Rochebrochard, a board member at BeReal and a partner at Kima Ventures and New Wave, investment firms co-founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel.

The company raised $30 million in Series A financing in June, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. Its market valuation was not disclosed, but several sources told the Financial Times it is approximately $600 million.

The free app’s rapid rise has already attracted equal resources on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, sparking discussions about BeReal’s long-term business model.

BeReal and its executives declined to comment for this story, which is based on interviews with several people close to the company. The app’s executives are said to want to avoid the pitfalls of big US rivals like Facebook and Snapchat by keeping a small team focused on improving the product rather than raising large sums from venture capitalists to pursue global expansion.

However, investors are asking BeReal to introduce new features that could help it not be a “passing wonder” like other fad social apps like Houseparty or Clubhouse. These discussions also included initial considerations on how best to monetize the platform without harming the user experience.

BeReal’s flagship product will continue to be free to access, but it is evaluating optional paid features. The approach likely resembles Discord, a social platform used by cryptocurrency gamers and enthusiasts, which charges a $2.99 ​​monthly subscription for bonus content such as digital stickers.

No paid features are expected to be released before the second half of next year, those sources said. While some at BeReal find ads annoying, advertising hasn’t been entirely ruled out.

But breakneck growth has made monetization a lower priority for BeReal than beefing up its technical infrastructure. Its capital reserves and reduced staff mean there is no immediate need to start generating revenue.

The company, founded in 2020 by Alexis Barreyat, 26, has around 40 employees working from its headquarters in the elegant Parisian neighborhood of Marais.

As a former influencer camera editor, Barreyat saw firsthand that curated social media content could harm young people’s mental health. The launch of their app coincided with growing awareness of the subject among a new generation of users.

The app sends a notification to all users at a certain time of day, with a two-minute window to take a picture using the phone’s front and back cameras.

But the very project that made BeReal a success led to widespread failures, temporarily preventing people from uploading photos or viewing posts from friends. As millions of users try to access the platform at the same time, the so-called “throughput”, or concurrency, of data at that time is comparable to some of the largest internet platforms in the world.

Barreyat, who doesn’t have a high school diploma, attended 42-year-old Niel’s programming school in France. His first contact with Niel’s headhunter La Rochebrochard in March 2020, when BeReal only had 500 users, was unsuccessful.

A year later, however, Niel’s son said he loved the app, and La Rochebrochard called Barreyat back. BeReal’s user base had grown to 30,000. After two days of due diligence, Niel’s team invested $1.2 million (R$6.35 million) to acquire a 10% stake in the company.

Despite his aversion to in-app advertising, personal marketing campaigns on US college campuses have been instrumental in BeReal’s success.

Its campus ambassador program pays some students about $250 a month, plus about $7 in commission for each new user they acquire. BeReal merchandising is distributed at frat parties and other events. The strategy is working: the US already accounts for 40% of BeReal downloads, according to data from analyst Sensor Tower, being the largest market for the app

“I like BeReal because it’s so transparent,” said Sharon Choi, 21, an “ambassador” at Stony Brook University in New York. “On Instagram and TikTok everything is filtered, on BeReal I don’t need to photoshop.”

However, some critics fear that BeReal lacks the resources to control harmful content, a problem that has plagued social media for a long time.

BeReal does not have a large content moderation team of its own, but it does have automated filtering.

Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who denounced the tech giant by accusing Meta of prioritizing profit over security, said the BeReal project could make it difficult to enter false information. However, ephemeral photo sharing can lead to the sharing of other types of harmful or offensive material.

“Unlike TikTok, Facebook or Instagram, BeReal doesn’t emphasize going viral or gaining wide reach — meaning there’s less ability for a small number of issues to have a lot of impact — discouraging bad behavior,” Haugen said. “At the same time, it’s not good to adopt security systems too late. I hope they have an intentional integrity plan that they’re building into their platform development.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves