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BeReal is #1 for social networking apps on the Apple App Store, and ninth in “free social apps” on Google Play. Between March and July, BeReal saw 85% of its total lifetime downloads of 20.2 million, according to data from data.ai. The platform has found popularity beyond the college students it originally attracted, following the path of Snapchat, Facebook and others.

But BeReal bets on close friends just as Facebook and Instagram have decided to bury them. The global success of TikTok, which calls itself an entertainment app rather than social media, is pulling social media companies away from friends and toward curated content. BeReal doesn’t want to be like any of them. But what if it has to in order to survive?

BeReal declined to comment for this story, so it’s unclear what the plans are. In response to an interview request, an investor told Protocol that CEO Alexis Barreyat “asked us not to share anything related to the company,” then sent a screenshot of BeReal’s position in the App Store. Another person close to the BeReal team said the company is trying to keep a cool head, staying laser-focused on the product rather than broadcasting its plans publicly.

With plans under wraps, it’s hard to know what features, if any, BeReal will introduce as it grows. But social media experts told Protocol that while BeReal fills a valuable niche now, it will likely need to reiterate its vision for long-term success.

“In a way, asking what I think will happen with BeReal is like asking how long I think a certain icebreaker will have at the start of every meeting,” said Coye Cheshire, a social psychologist at the University of California. Berkeley. “Eventually, people are going to get tired of it.”

The future of social media, according to social media

At its core, social media is about connection, and there are endless ways to connect. With BeReal, people connect by posting a front and back photo once a day at a random time chosen by the app, within a two-minute time limit. Users cannot see their friends’ photos until they take one themselves. Cheshire calls it the “gamification of how to be social”. Humans have a genuine need to be social, share information and form emotional connections. Social media companies fill that need, but they’ve also found ways to monetize it.

“Why are we building social media in the first place?” Cheshire said. “It’s largely because companies, and this is not an evil thing, see a financial interest in exploiting people’s need to be social.”

The future of social media, from the perspective of social media companies, is more about what will keep users coming back to their platforms than what will help people socialize in better, easier, and perhaps even more meaningful ways. That’s why Meta, Instagram and Snapchat have pivoted so many times. TikTok, the most downloaded app in the world, is quickly gobbling up users with a highly addictive algorithm full of content from creators they don’t know. Instagram is also moving in this direction, despite a temporary reduction in recommended posts following pressure from high-profile users such as Kylie Jenner. A video from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri last month shows the company’s dedication to the recommendation algorithm.

“We want to do our best by creators, especially small creators,” Mosseri said. “We see endorsements as one of the best ways to help them reach a new audience and gain more followers.”

Not all social media companies are abandoning close friends in favor of creators and algorithms. The Clubhouse, although it has faded in popularity since its launch in 2020, believes small social communities are the next big thing. The clubhouse is launching a new feature called “House”: smaller sound spaces that are like “private corridors just for your favorite people.” In a tweet about “Houses,” Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison said the best social experiences are “small and curated.”

Another new social platform, Niche, allows people to connect based on their shared interests. “If you connect people who have some hobbies or interests or something in common, it can actually lead to a better social media experience than just connecting people who went to school together or are family members,” co-founder Zaven Nahapetyan told Protocol in a previous interview.

Where does this leave BeReal?

The arena for a social media platform that is just close friends is wide open, especially if Instagram and TikTok abandon friends in favor of creator-based algorithmic feeds. BeReal’s next step may provide a clue as to whether sharing with close friends is something users like Think that they want or something they actual wishes. Herd, for example, bet that users wanted a “less toxic” experience of social media. But it struggled to get funding and stopped developing its app as a result.

“Where are the teenagers or students who see their friends?” asked Nikita Bier, founder of the now defunct app called tbh and an investor in BeReal. “I think we’re at a tipping point for another app to own that vertical.”

Maybe BeReal doesn’t need to take over the world to stay popular. Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center, said the next generation of social media users isn’t sticking to one platform. They add to the number of platforms they use, and each network tends to have its own purpose. If so, BeReal can still be an addition to the list of platforms people use every day.

“Sometimes they pull back from things they used to do, or just drop things they used to do,” Rainie said of user habits. “But in more cases than not, they let it stay out there and they move on or add to the repertoire.”

Adam Blacker, director of content and communications at Apptopia, agreed that BeReal could thrive as part of the regular social media diet. Achieving a TikTok level of success is “insane and requires the playing of the human brain,” Blacker said. But BeReal can be happy, and still be able to make money through ads or in-app purchases, with a less dependent user base.

Sierra Moore, creative director of influencer marketing company Open Influence, said that as BeReal grows and expands beyond college-aged users, the platform needs to adapt accordingly. She said as users’ audiences grow by adding more friends or sharing their BeReal posts to other platforms, they may begin to move away from posting “raw and real” content to attract even more eyeballs.

BeReal users are already running out of close friends to add and are starting to add loose acquaintances, Bier said. But he insists it is possible to build a sustainable app for close friends. He is also an investor in Locket, a sort of competitor to BeReal where people send photos to friends that are automatically updated in an iPhone widget. It is primarily intended for couples, but Bier acknowledged that expansion to other types of relationships is essential to attract more engagement and users. He likened it to Snapchat’s launch of Stories: Instead of sending photos directly to close friends, people could post updates to their wider social networks.

“I would be curious to see what is the second act, the ‘Stories’ of BeReal,” Bier said. “Right now, your photos are being sent to your entire social graph. So maybe they’re going the other way and focusing on messaging or sending to individuals or things like that.”

If BeReal ends up going the mega-platform route, it could also start attracting big brands. Open Influence’s Moore said brands’ attitudes toward BeReal are similar to their initial approach to TikTok: hesitant and cautious, then urgent and necessary. Brands had to learn that it’s OK to post unpolished content on TikTok, and they may have to learn the same on BeReal.

“I feel there could be a similar development [on BeReal],” she said. “We’re definitely open and hoping that we can find a brand to work with to try it out.”

BeReal faces the same threats as any new social platform: The death blow could come from one of the larger platforms. Instagram has already incorporated BeReal’s signature front and back image format, and Twitter launched Circle for users to share tweets with a smaller audience. But Bier, who worked at Facebook after the company bought (and immediately spun off) tbh, said he was skeptical that true copycat features would emerge anytime soon.

While users won’t know how BeReal will hold up in the current landscape for a while, UC Berkeley’s Cheshire is encouraging people to think bigger when it comes to the future of social media. Platforms naturally lead the way by shaping the way people interact on the internet. But really, how it looks is up to the users themselves.

“Why do we have individual companies or platforms versus, say, a protocol?” asked Cheshire. “We are limited in our imagination by the development of the technologies we already have.”