Last weekend, it rolled out its shameless BeReal clone, TikTok Now, as a standalone app in global markets outside the U.S. It’s time for BeReal to grow up.īeReal’s missteps, however, could open the door to more social app newcomers who offer a service that’s built on more than a gimmick.įor what it’s worth, TikTok has realized this market still has tons of unclaimed territory. The company raised a $30 million Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, followed by a Series B from DST Global, valuing the startup, pre-money at $600+ million. Remember that this is no longer some scrappy app maker, paying college students to download its new toy. Gaining the top spot on the App Store as Gen Z’s favorite social app also comes with responsibilities, and so far, BeReal has been dropping the ball on that front. It can get away with this for now - but not forever. This begs the question as to how the company will handle a more serious crisis - like a hack, data breach or another incident involving bad actors on its platform. It doesn’t even publish useful release notes on the App Store.Īpp Store release notes - so helpful! Image Credits: BeRealĪnd BeReal couldn’t respond to a series of simple questions about its outage - like what caused it or how widespread it was. It doesn’t pitch or post to a blog to keep its users updated. To date, BeReal has only offered off-the-record briefings with select press. But as the company scales, the team’s inability to communicate with its own users and the media could become a larger problem. BeReal’s misstep with users will be forgiven for now. There are times to be cute and cheeky with social media posts - but those times are not amid outages and other serious platform issues. The company is behaving poorly for an app in its position. It also added the #instagramdown hashtag to increase the visibility of its post. By comparison, when Instagram experienced a briefer, partial outage the following day, it spelled out that it understood the situation by noting that some people were “having trouble accessing Instagram,” and that it was working to fix things as quickly as possible and to stay tuned. That’s a good start, but BeReal has yet to figure out key parts of its business, like monetization, and is struggling to communicate both with its own users and the wider public.įor instance, when the app went down this week, the company vaguely tweeted a statement - “yup, we’re on it” - that largely left its user base in the dark about what was going on. In fact, younger people are hungry for a place to be themselves and keep up with their friends outside of feeds filled with creator content and targeted ads.īut BeReal’s long-term success is not a given at this point, even though the app currently has established itself as a leader in the App Store’s Top Five, and is often the No. Just as Instagram grew under Facebook’s shadow, there’s room for other apps to grow outside TikTok - an app that is today seen as more of an entertainment platform than a place to connect with close friends (though TikTok is pushing to change that).īeReal’s rise is proof that alternative networks that prioritize real-world friendships can still find traction. But there still seems to be this sentiment among a number of app makers that trying to compete in social is a lost cause. Last month, we looked at how one of the world’s largest social networks, Facebook, had begun to fade in relevance - and was losing its position in the App Store’s Top Charts, as a result - while young people turned to apps like BeReal and TikTok instead. Today’s dominant social networks are losing their grip on the youngest generation of internet users. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.ĭo you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: /newsletters Top Stories Now is the time to build new social apps Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |