UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Follow publication

Member-only story

Why the “iPhone App of the year” made $0 in 2022

How “BeReal” became an overnight sensation with minimalist design and zero revenue.

Kelsey O'Connor
UX Collective
Published in
4 min readDec 25, 2022
App screens showing both founders of BeReal surrounded with money.
BeReal founders Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau (Photo by TheWrap)

What if social media was actually authentic?

French techies Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau decided to find an answer to this question back in 2020 when they launched BeReal, a photo-sharing app that allows users to post one photo a day to show what they’re up to in real-time.

The idea was simple enough:

A buzzer goes off at a randomly selected time, and you’re given 2 minutes to respond with a photo of what you’re doing in the moment. No filters allowed.

App screen depicting the user experience of BeReal.
Because of the spontaneous nature of the app, users are encouraged to be transparent and keep their following to a close circle of friends. (Photo by Yahoo Sports)

You might be wondering:

Why introduce yet another social media app when we are quite literally drowning with the number of platforms we’re supposed to keep up with?

BeReal was an idea that spawned from Barreyat and Perreau’s observations that social media was no longer being used the way it was intended to.

When Instagram first came out, your feed was likely filled with innocent pictures of food, animals, or friends with a…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

No responses yet

Write a response