BeReal's Buzz Bubble Bursts

Last year at this time, Paris-based BeReal was a rising star of the social networking world. Through the first three quarters of 2022, the app rode a surge of downloads as young people embraced its novel approach to sharing.

One photo, once per day, only when the app notified you. BeReal became such a thing that it was even featured in a Saturday Night Live skit.

But that growth fell off a cliff in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. And as it tends to do, the hype cycle turned against BeReal.

I wrote a story for Sifted in February suggesting momentum had slowed. In the following months, the global media caught up and generated some ugly headlines for BeReal: