French app developer Voodoo bought the photo-sharing app BeRealby for an enormous €500 million ($537 million). The app made a name for itself by being the “anti-Instagram”, where it asked users to be more authentic and transparent about their lives.
BeReal was started in 2019 and enjoyed a brief time at number one in the app stores after people started to feel disenchanted with Instagram.
The app asks users to post and share a photo at a random time of day when prompted. The user stops whatever they are doing in the moment and takes a photo with both the front and back cameras on the photo simultaneously.
The results have been varied, with one hilariously timed update from a woman in the middle of her annual pap-smear checkup. It really doesn’t get much more real than that!
By 2023 BeReal had approximately 20 million daily users, however you could hardly say it held the same popularity as TikTok for example.
“BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends,” says Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo co-founder and CEO. “We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo’s know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity.”
Voodoo intends to continue to develop the BeReal app, and help “unlock its potential”. It probably knows what its doing since its the number three app publisher currently, behind only Google and Meta. Voodoo says it will begin to roll out new features in the app and grow the user base via organic and paid marketing.
[via petapixel]
