BeReal is a social media platform designed around spontaneous and authentic sharing. Unlike traditional social platforms focused on curated content and performance-driven engagement, BeReal encourages users to share unfiltered moments from their daily lives using simultaneous front and back camera captures.
The platform’s core value proposition is:
helping users connect through real-life moments rather than polished online identities.
However, while the product successfully generated early curiosity and differentiation, sustaining long-term engagement remains challenging due to onboarding friction, social dependency, and weak activation experiences.
BeReal gained rapid popularity through its anti-curation positioning but struggled to sustain long-term engagement after its initial growth phase.
BeReal struggles to retain new users because the product requires high social participation before users experience meaningful value.
New users often:
As a result, activation weakens early, reducing the likelihood of long-term retention.
This activation failure creates a bottleneck in the AARRR funnel. Because Activation is weak, Day-1 to Day-7 Retention drops significantly. A high churn rate directly shortens the user lifecycle, severely restricting the overall Lifetime Value (LTV) of our user base and increasing the blended Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) since we have to constantly acquire new users to replace the churned ones.
To understand the retention breakdown, the product was explored from the perspective of a first-time user unfamiliar with BeReal.