If you keep your eyes open for any social media trends, you might have already heard of BeReal. Launched in France in late 2019, BeReal has been downloaded over 50 million times by now and is valued at $600 million. But how does BeReal actually work?

To simplify the core of BeReal, you could say it’s a social network. The app sends out a notification to all users to simultaneously. When opening the notification, the user sees a two minute countdown to post a picture — or more specifically — two pictures. BeReal uses both cameras of your smartphone.

Working in Product teaches us the importance of optimizing the engagement of our users. BeReal does this in a quite unusual way. When you open the app you actually see … nothing. Without posting a picture yourself, the entire content on the platform is blurred. So the users are not lured into an endless stream to maximize the time spent on the app. However, they are strongly triggered to post a picture themselves. Activating 10 million daily users shows that being different — or being real — can lead to significant traffic.

Another significant difference is the lack of ads. At the moment there is no possibility to promote your content. It’s quite refreshing to see a feed with no sponsored postings. However, some brands are already experimenting on how to use BeReal to promote their business. As of now the app offers no monetization program, so your traffic and reach are purely organic.

TikTok was quick to introduce a clone of BeReal and even introduced it in the bottom navigation bar. However, it’s been removed from there now and lives in it’s own app called “TikTok Now”.

It is unclear in which direction the company is heading. For sure the creators will introduce some monetization feature at some point. Until then it has one big advantage, it’s simply fun to use.

BeReal — you’ve got 2 minutes to post. was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.