BeReal Adds New Social Discovery Options

BeReal has added a new ‘friends of friends’ feed to its social media offering, which expands on its ability to be a positive social discovery app as well. BeReal is the social app that asks its users to share one post a day, showing friends and family what their lives are really like. You only get one chance to take your picture and limited time to submit your BeReal post. 

It essentially wants to be the social media app that flies in the face of convention in the space. Its goal is to have users who do not obsess about the numbers, whether number of likes or number of followers – but have users who make real and authentic posts and connections with their friends. No filters, no time to choreograph, but just simple snaps of your day. 

The app’s primary focus has been sharing your post with friends and family, but did feature a Discovery tab that showed what users from all around the world were posting. That has now been replaced with a much more useful feed, friends of friends. It does exactly what it says on the tin. If you choose to allow your post to be shared on the feed, friends of friends will now see them in this feed and vice versa. 

Making new friends through existing friendships is an obvious and much used technique in human history. BeReal is now bringing it into the digital world of social media. It can feel safer to make connections with new people when you have a trusted mutual connection. 

We have talked a lot about how the endless swathes of followers, brands and celebrities on social media can actually make them isolating spaces. This focus on friends, and then friends of friends, could help make for social media and social discovery that is more authentic, focussed and manageable. 

BeReal says it has 20 million active users after exploding onto the scene last year. It’s interesting to see it turn to social discovery features to help improve its offering and value to its users.