The Craft of Carving out a New Market

Finding a Market in a competitive space is difficult. One such app that has been on the rise is BeReal. It’s been a few months since I started using this social app called BeReal and I have some thoughts, on this. I’ve written down the consumer psychology of what I think the makers of this app have double down on.

**Note: I’ve put (new) in front of features which I actually found new.**

BACKSTORY:

I remember the first day I started using it, was kind of a weird feeling. It isn’t a ‘social’ app and the app puts emphasis on “Be real with your ‘Real’ friends”. Now, the first thing that came to my mind was “this obviously isn’t like Instagram where you can have hundreds if not thousands of followers”.

Now, I opened the app to find nothing interesting, there. It felt like a scam until, I found one of my friends on it. Got connected and realised that, you have to post your BeReal first to see what your friend has posted which was kind of (new) to me.

When I posted, it took photos from both the front and the rear cameras of the phone(new)(weird).

Not so surprisingly, I had to retake the photo because it didn’t come out good. So, I posted retake afterwards, only to find out that it also exposed the number of retakes (new).

Also, it started sending me notification at any random time of the day to post BeReal(new) and gave me 2 minutes to post the photo(new). If I didn’t post within the given timeframe, it shows how late I posted(new).

MY PERSPECTIVE:

My first introduction to this app was through a Tech Influencer with millions in following on YouTube. It seems like the creators of this app began leveraging the audience of people with good distribution through paid marketing.

If I were to look from a personal standpoint, this app has positioned itself into the typical social media scene but is carving out a market for itself. The target audience as far as it seems like, is somewhere between Teenagers to people in their 20’s. The younger audience usually have a tendency to try every new thing that comes out. Therefore, there’s a lot of potential in this segment of the market. So, if the product that is being launched is liked by a few from “this” segment of the audience there’s a higher possibility of them telling their friends about it (Word Of Mouth).

The typical scenario of “User Hook” is unlike Instagram. On Instagram, you scroll through reels, get notified of the posts/ reels sent by your friends etc. But, on BeReal you get notified to post at any random time of the day given the limited time frame in which you’ve to post which somewhat induces a sense of “urgency” to get it done ASAP. Some take it seriously, some don’t. But, to be able to see your friends’ BeReal you’ve to post yours, first. This tapping into the ‘curiosity’ of the individuals at a core level somehow influences the user to post their BeReal even if they don’t want to, which, I found interesting. They also have the ‘Discovery’ section wherein one can go through the BeReal’s posted by random individuals across the globe. This is another way of making the user (who’s naturally curious) to stay on the app for long.

Now, since the main tagline is to bring in “Real Friends” only. The point of “signalling” the number of followers is out of question. It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll plan on monetising the audience.