BeReal and the power of "no algorithm"

BeReal. , one of the latest social media platforms (coming from France ????????) was in the news a lot last year, mostly because of its somewhat original concept of sharing an authentic “me”. Won’t go into the concept, check this link if you want to learn more about it.

I’d rather highlight something different that dawned on me just as I was walking down the beautiful streets of Budapest District 8 (nyolcker reprezent!). In the beginning, I loved the app, was new and fresh, but then I started getting bored with it… I realized that the instant burst of information that is provided on the daily, at about the same time, it was getting too much. As more of my friends joined the app, I had to scroll thru 20-30 photos at a time to check them all, instead of 8-10 which made it very intimate and almost feeling exclusive at the beginning. And then I realized why I started to feel this way. BeReal didn’t have an algorithm for your feed. You saw everyone’s post chronologically. And we’re not used to this anymore.

As someone who used to be a major fan of no algorithm Instagram, I almost felt ashamed ???? Am I really getting bored of an app because it does what I used to love with previous ones, and it actually shows the true timeline and fullness of all my BeReal friend’s post? And then another angle dawned on me: I follow close to 1000 accounts on Instagram, and I don’t even have an idea about Facebook. It’d be impossible to go thru all the content with the old approach (even if at least half of these accounts are relatively dormant I believe). So instead, to make us believe we still follow these accounts (and be able to show us way more ads) Insta and Facebook came with prioritization algorithms -? at the cost of seeing less than 10% of your friend’s posts, only companies’ ads, viral pictures, photos and videos that others decided for you to be worthy of your attention.

Conclusion as a user? Maybe we should follow fewer accounts? Our attention can only spread thin, we just simply cannot consume the amount of info we willingly subscribe to. But due to social or peer pressure, or just general ignorance we keep deceiving ourselves that we should or must keep all this info coming at us constantly. Enter algorithms! Enter control by AI or some other methods! And the consequences that we saw (elections, COVID, misinformation, the works).

Conclusion as a marketeer? Instead of pushing out 3-4 posts per day (many of which might be generated by ChatGPT and alike...), maybe it’s worth doing less while creating real value and a genuine connection through your content. According to Hootsuite’s stats, 1 in 3 Gen Z users unfollow or block brand accounts weekly, and 73% only buy from brands they actually believe in.?

So let’s be way way more conscious of what and whom we follow, and also just as importantly, the amount of it all. A promise to myself: I’ll review the accounts I follow and unsubscribe (or at least mute) a good chunk of them. And will keep BeReal just because of the simple reason that at least there I decide what I see - at least for now!

/and although I guess it’s obvious this post was NOT sponsored by BeReal. ?? ... at least for now ?? /