Instagram appears to be copying another up-and-coming social media competitor: BeReal, the popular new photo app that asks users to take and post a picture once a day at the same time as their friends.
The veteran photo-sharing app is testing a feature that looks almost identical to BeReal, according to a screenshot posted on Twitter by developer Alessandro Paluzzi. In the image, Instagram asks users to “join IG Candid Challenges” and “every day at a different time, get a notification to capture and share a photo within 2 minutes.”
This is the basic premise of BeReal. An Instagram spokesperson said the tool was an “internal prototype” that it “didn’t test externally.” A spokesman for BeReal had no immediate comment.
Kylie Jenner slammed Instagram’s move to mimic TikTok’s short videos. Credit: Getty Images
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced last week that it would study how major digital platforms, such as Instagram, copy the features of smaller competitors to see if it is consolidating the power of operators in the market.
BeReal, founded in 2020 and based in Paris, has become popular among teenagers thanks to its push to get people to post at the same time. Taking pictures at an unexpected time every day has also resulted in a less polished experience because users don’t spend time staging, editing or perfecting pictures, a frequent criticism of Instagram posts.
Meta, which owns Instagram, has a history of copying features from upstart competitors, including Snapchat’s Stories product and TikTok’s short videos.
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While its move to copy Stories was widely considered a success, its experiments this year with adopting TikTok’s full-screen combination, the autoplay of videos selected by an algorithm, rather than who follow a user, they caused a reaction. The company scaled back some of its plans after celebrities, including model and makeup entrepreneur Kylie Jenner, criticized the move.
BeReal has raised money from big international venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, but its business strategy is unclear. For now, BeReal has no ads or any subscription products to generate revenue unlike Meta, which recently reported $US28 billion ($40.7 billion) in revenue for the second quarter.