How Social Apps Like BeReal., Poparazzi & VSCO Can Help Marketers Learn About Gen Z

Download Now: Social Media Trends in 2022 [Free Report]

In April, BeReal – a social media app that hosts many Gen Z users, saw 315% YoY daily download growth. Meanwhile, another popular Gen Z app called Poparazzi is seeing 96,100 downloads per month (just from the Apple App Store.).

And, these apps – which both encourage “authentic” photo-sharing, come a few years after VSCO – another image-sharing app – went viral (particularly among Gen Z demographics).

Haven’t heard of any of these apps? Don’t panic.

Ultimately, we haven’t written much about them for a reason: Because these apps aim to offer safe spaces for users to share their most authentic selves, we don’t really think there’s a place for brands or marketing on them just yet.

So, why are we discussing them now?

At this point, we’ve continued to watch as multiple apps that encourage minimal filtering, authenticity, and unedited content go viral with an influx of Gen Z users. And although marketers might not be a great fit for many of these apps, the trends themselves ultimately bring up themes about Gen Z that marketers will need to know as the group reaches full buying power.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the newer social platforms used by Gen Z, if you should even be on them, and what to do to continue reaching this group in alternative areas of the web.

3 Newer Social Media Platforms With Large Gen Z Audiences

BeReal.

BeReal. has a perfect 5-star rating in the Apple Store with over 20,000 reviews. The app aims to fight materialism, social media insecurity, and false narratives users of Instagram or other social media platforms might run into by forcing users to publish a photo within a certain time limit and with minimal editing tools each day.

When you create an account on the app, you’re asked to enable your notifications, permit both front and back cameras, and create a username.

Each day at a random time, BeReal will send a notification saying you have 2 minutes to take a photo exactly where you are. You’ll open the app to a camera screen with a ticking timer at the top.

When you press the capture button, the camera will take a picture of what your back camera is facing and a picture of you (or whatever your front camera is facing). You can then add a caption and a location, but you cannot remove either of the images captured or add filters.

Once your image is published either with the “Only Friends” or “Discovery” privacy settings, you’ll either see it in a feed with all of your friends’ photos taken at that relative time – or see it on a public Discovery feed with photos from all other users taken at that same relative time.