BeReal No Longer Looks To Be the Next Big Thing. BeFake Instead?

BeReal active users are down 18% from the November peak, although the app continues to grow in France where it started

BeReal caught the imagination of some social media users as a selfie-centric social app that aims to provide an antidote to staged “my life is perfect” photo sharing. Instead, it challenges users to share a spontaneous photo of their real lives with their friend network, and that prompt arrives at a random and unpredictable time of day.

The app caught fire in late 2022 and still has a substantial user base, but rapid growth has given way to a steady decline. Meanwhile, a BeFake app is seeking success with a contrary approach.

Key takeaways

• Monthly active users for BeReal on iOS and Android in the US have declined from a November peak of 3.7 million to just over 3 million in August, according to Similarweb estimates. For comparison, despite falling from its early peak, Threads still has more than twice that many users in the US, nearly 7.3 million.
• On Android, where Similarweb has better worldwide visibility into app usage, monthly active users dropped 19% from 19.5 million in December to just over 16 million in August.
• In France, where the application started, usage has continued to climb, approaching 615,000 monthly active users in August, up from less than 500,00 when the app was getting the most buzz elsewhere late last year.
• Meanwhile, BeReal has new competition from an app that sounds like a parody, BeFake, which encourages users to make their selfies more exciting with the use of generative AI image manipulation.

Much smaller than other social apps (even Threads)

While BeReal is holding onto a subset of its users, it never had quite the explosion in users that Meta’s Threads enjoyed at launch in July – and still has many fewer than even the diminished audience Threads enjoys today. Instagram, the app populated with superficial selfies of the sort BeReal is supposed to be the antidote to, has more than 48 times as many users in the US.

On the other hand, BeReal has nearly four times as many monthly active users as Bluesky (which is still in beta but, like Threads, is often considered a competitor to Twitter).

Still growing in France

BeReal is based in France and still enjoys a loyal and growing user base there as an exception to the global rule.

Time to BeFake instead?

It sounds like a parody, but TechCrunch reports that BeFake is for real, with $3 million in funding. A new app with a twist on the concept of selfie social media, BeFake has positioned itself as the diametric opposite of BeReal. Using generative AI image manipulation, it offers to make the images more exciting than reality.

On one recent day, BeFake attracted more than 4,000 daily active users on Android and it’s just ramping up.

Like BeReal, BeFake has a (website befakeai.com) that does little more than point users to the iOS and Android app stores where the mobile app can be downloaded.

The BeFake website has seen some traffic spikes recently as it’s been getting more news coverage. But just for context, the BeFake website barely registers among the websites for which Similarweb provides estimates. On the best day for befakeai.com, the BeReal website at bereal.com got nearly eight times as much traffic.

Maybe “genuine” social media has a limited appeal?

Whether or not BeFake poses a real challenge to BeReal, at the moment BeReal doesn’t seem to pose much of a challenge to the more self-absorbed social media it was set up as a counterweight to.

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Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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