What is BeReal? BeReal Review, Features

Founded in 2020 by French entrepreneur Alexis Barreyat, BeReal is “a new and unique way to discover who your friends are really like in their everyday lives.” It encourages people to be more authentic, rather than trying to present their best selves.

How it works

At different times every day, users receive a push notification from the app. They have just 2 minutes to open BeReal and take a photo of what they are doing. The app activates the front and back cameras on the user’s phone, so in effect, the user takes two photos that are uploaded simultaneously, allowing others to see what the user looks like and where he or she is.

Features of BeReal

1. No beauty filter

The "scary" thing about BeReal is that no filters or beauty effects are enabled when users take photos. During the 2-minute shooting time, although users can delete unsatisfactory photos and retake them, the time does limit the number of operations they can perform. What's more terrible is that other people can see whether you have retaken the photo and how many times you have retaken it. It is simply a "social death scene".

2. No diving

Users can't see their friends' BeReals before posting their own. In other words, no one can just lurk, but must actively participate, which is probably the most significant difference between the app and apps like Instagram. Think about how many followers there are on other social platforms who never post, rarely interact, and just lurk, observe, and slide away silently.

3. Reply with photos

When we want to interact with the poster on other platforms, we usually choose to like, heart or leave an emoji, but on BeReal, users need to use their own faces as a reply tool, that is, take a photo of themselves making corresponding expressions - thumbs up, grinning, shocked face, unmoved face, flustered face, smiling face, crying face, to reply to the post.