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Why the “iPhone App of the year” made $0 in 2022
How “BeReal” became an overnight sensation with minimalist design and zero revenue.

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.

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…