Meta has announced news for Instagram and although there are several, without a doubt the most prominent of all is the one that will recreate the BeReal phenomenon in its app, which has also been copied on TikTok, apparently without much luck. We will have to see if Instagram has the same luck.
In case you’re confused, BeReal is the great novelty of 2022 as far as social networks are concernedone that is having a brilliant success, although by its nature it seems difficult for it to prevail in the current panorama, in which in one way or another, for some niches or others, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and other platforms share the favor -and what is more important, the time- of the users.
BeReal is a French social network that appeared in 2020, but whose hit did not begin to take place until the beginning of this year, especially among younger people, still the main focus of traction. It is a photo platform, in the style of Instagram, but with a particularity: users can only post one image a day at the time the application tells them to. that moment are two minutes that vary from day to dayfor more inri.
The intricacies of BeReal, it is supposed, favors naturalness, contrary to what happens with many of the contents on Instagram or TikTok, mostly faked and rightly so in many cases. Not only that: in BeReal, If you don’t post, you can’t see what other users post or the friends you have added there. It may all sound like a lot of trouble, but it has positioned itself as one of the most downloaded applications of the year for Android and iPhone.
TikTok already tried to copy BeReal, but with videos, through its Now feature, which forces you to post something in order to see what others have posted on Now. And now it is the turn of Instagram, which with a new function called Candid Storieswhose translation could be something like honest stories, will do the same: it will launch a daily notification with a window of time to post and only those who use it will be able to see what others post.
Other innovations that Instagram is working on include notes, a kind of mini-message of up to 60 characters with which to decorate or report something in the user profile; and groups, which is exactly what it sounds like: Instagram limited to a group of people, so that everything remains between family, friends, colleagues, etc. However, it is the Candid Stories that are giving the most talk for the reasons mentioned, and that is that the giants no longer innovate.
It has been seen with Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, both copied from TikTok, but also with the aforementioned TikTok Now, copied from BeReal. And the same makes more sense, because being involved in a social network as ephemeral as what BeReal proposes, may well function as a section within a more complete service. Again, we will have to see it, and we will even have to see if in 2023 they do not surprise us with some other new trend.
