Spontaneous Photo-Sharing Applications : bereal

‘BeReal’ is a mobile social networking application that places emphasis on realism and spontaneity. The application allows users to add friends to form a network, but it does not have support for posts, commenting, liking, following, etc. Instead of forming itself like a traditional social media application, BeReal works by sending direct photos to one another that are unedited, unfiltered, and impromptu.

Once users have signed up for the application and added their friends, the application will begin prompting each user in the friend group once per day to take a picture. Once receiving the prompt, users have two minutes to take a picture, wherever they are. This picture can either be shared directly to the friend group or publicly for anyone on the application to discover. It is important to note that the application uses both the front and back cameras to take its pictures, effectively providing an update on what each user is doing at the time of the prompt.

The application has recently gained a large amount of popularity, situating itself as a top-performing application on both the Apple Store and Google Play Stores.

Image Credit: BeReal