BeReal's challenges show the difficulty for new consumer apps to break out absent a big platform shift, as users lack the time to try additional consumer apps
The recent reports that BeReal is struggling with either a fundraise or growth or both, is a bummer. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : A key form of value creation by smartphones was creating more time for consumer entertainment. You could now use social media, stream movies or play games from anywhere at anytime. — However all that time is now used up. Every new consumer app or platform has to compete for your time against TikTok, Fortnite and Invincible season 2. …
Context & Ripple Effects
BeReal’s early surge and fundraising gave way to visible retention pressure: by spring 2023, reporting described daily-user declines and fatigue with the app’s core format. Its subsequent move to admit brands and celebrities marked an effort to broaden participation beyond the original social loop.
The company had also explored paid features as an alternative to advertising, while its later opening to brands and celebrities showed the growing need to find both engagement and revenue levers. The current difficulties place those experiments against a more basic constraint: consumer attention is already heavily allocated.
First-order effects
- BeReal faces a harder case for new financing and sustained growth because it must win time from entrenched entertainment and social products, not merely persuade users to download another app.
- The company’s options narrow toward changes that can create repeat value or revenue—such as its prior paid-feature exploration and broader participant mix—rather than relying on novelty alone.
Second-order effects
- Other consumer-app founders and investors must place more weight on retention and a clearly differentiated use case; BeReal’s earlier retention warning signs illustrate why initial adoption is insufficient.
- Established platforms benefit from attention scarcity: each additional consumer service competes against their existing habits, raising the acquisition and engagement burden for smaller entrants.
Third-order effects
- If attention remains the binding constraint, consumer-app markets may increasingly reward products tied to a platform transition or a distinct recurring utility, rather than standalone social formats built around a single novel interaction.
- Monetization experimentation is likely to arrive earlier in an app’s lifecycle, but it can also test the authenticity proposition that initially attracted users; whether that trade-off improves durability remains uncertain.
The trend: Consumer-app growth is shifting from smartphone-era expansion toward competition for a largely fixed pool of leisure attention, making durable retention and distribution advantages more decisive.