BeReal: Product Teardown

TLDR: WATCH THE VIDEO (click above)

---

BeReal is everything most social media platforms are not. Instead of photoshopped selfies of me doing yoga on the beach (so not me!) you get imperfectly lit shots of my kitchen – because that’s what I’m doing right now.

In other words, BeReal lives up to its name. I can “be real” in it. But if it’s so unlike other successful social media apps, why does it work so well?

The answer lies in another kind of “BE”: the one that’s an abbreviation of behavioral economics.

3 things you’ll learn from watching this:

• How BeReal nails the 3B’s (key behavior, reduce barriers, amplify benefits)

• How BeReal uses social norms and streaks to increase product engagement

• Why you should focus not on the outcome you want for your product, but on what users need to do to get that outcome

See you next week with an all-new teardown of one of your favorite (or not?) meditation apps 🧘‍♀️

👉 This is a NEW series of product teardowns. Subscribe below to get future ones. Hit “subscribe.”

👂 Transcript:

BeReal has captured the hearts, the minds, and the cameras of so many people. It is one of the top apps in the app store, and we're going to dive into why that is. The idea is be, BeReal has a lot of BE (behavioral economics) in it. And so what is it? It's actually just this, I just posted a picture of my kitchen. On the internet.

Why did I do that? Because BeReal prompted me to post what I was doing in the moment right now. That is BeReal. So BeReal nails the 3B's: key behavior, reduce barriers and amplify benefits. This is the framework that we use for behavior change. The number one thing, a key behavior. Basically, if you want to do any behavior change, the first step is to choose the behavior you want to change.

Sounds obvious, but many people miss this step. Sometimes we just focus on the outcome, like the revenue, the profit, the health, and the wellbeing. That's an outcome that you get. In order to do behavior change, we need to focus on the action that somebody needs to do to get to the outcome. An action is specific, observable and measurable.

Have a friend who would enjoy these teardowns? Click the button below to refer them (& earn some great rewards)👇

This is exactly what BeReal nails. So if you look at another example, ClassPass, you can see what is the key behavior. Try it for free. It's plastered everywhere on their site. It's a blue button. “Try for free.” But what about this random website? No idea what the key behavior is, right? No clue. What about YouTube?

This is YouTube's homepage. Hard to figure out what the key behavior is. Yes, it's "click a video," but what video? Who goes to the YouTube homepage not clear what their key behavior is? Put that against BeReal. Wildly obvious, right? Their key behavior is to post a picture immediately of what you are doing right now.

Curiosity. They put all of my friends' pictures behind this wall until I post. I don't get to see them until I post. What a motivator and attention. Look, this is a big, salient contrast button. I just want to click it. And then they're setting the social norms. Don't do it late. Your friends, you'll get a label two hours late Don't do that.

And then they give me urgency. The moment that I bring out my camera, there's a countdown time or pushing me to just post what I'm doing. In the moment. So they made the key behavior uncomfortably specific and put it front and center. But how do they do? How do they get you to do the key behavior?

So the second B is to reduce barriers, right? So in other social media platforms, it's a high barrier. There's extreme cognitive overload. Like I have an empty text box with Twitter, I have to be funny, interesting, insightful. I have to figure out what I'm going to post. And then I'm thinking to myself, if I'm not funny, interesting, insightful, no one will like it.

This will then prevent me from posting for that regret aversion. BeReal, on the other hand, is real easy. Let's watch.

"So I would say that posting on Instagram's like stressful for me, so I've only posted on Instagram three times. But for BeReal it's very casual compared to Instagram. So I would much rather just do it even though like it's stressful getting the picture perfect, but like nobody's picture's perfect."

"Because you don't have to think about BeReal, right? And how many times you post on BeReal?" 

"Like, probably every day. Probably once every time it goes off."

Well, okay. You, you heard it. She's posting once every time that it goes off. Very different from a Twitter or an Instagram. And so basically they've decreased barriers by what? By telling me what to post. Very clear. Whatever I'm doing right now, telling me when to post right now and then telling me how to post the social norm is not of people on beaches doing fun poses.

It's literally what you're doing right now. And then the kicker here is the amplify benefits. This is the third B. And very important. Basically, what's my motivation to post right now? Why am I actually posting? And it's because they've hidden my friends' posts behind this wall so that immediately, as soon as I post, I get to see what everyone else is doing.

What a big driver. And finally they have this fun streak so I can see, you know, am I doing it every day? If I miss a day, then my streak counter doesn't look great. So you've got this extreme benefit motivator that pushes you to do something that actually is pretty easy to do anyway. And that is the 3B's: the key behavior, reduce barriers, amplify benefits. BeReal has nailed the 3B's.

Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.