BeReal is now in freefall. Why are new social media apps doomed to fail? | Ysabel Gerrard

In the race to create the new Instagram, rivals morph into each other, losing what makes them special in the first place

Technology writers are sadly (some gleefully) announcing the latest admission to the social media morgue: the formerly ascendant photo-sharing app BeReal.

The app had been a huge success, jumping from 1m to 20m users in just seven months. Central to its success was its positioning as the anti-Instagram, a platform trading on authenticity that offered a glimpse of our friends' real" (read: mundane) lives. But its active daily users more than halved between October 2022 and March 2023, down from 20m to 6m. Its expected demise not only forces us to ask how authentic" a photo-sharing app can ever be, but whether we actually want the authenticity it sells.