Key Takeaways:
Voodoo announced that it would purchase BeReal for €500mn last week. BeReal soared in popularity shortly after its expansion to various markets, but it's popular streak quickly faded as competitors, such as Instagram with its candid stories feature and TikTok with TikTok Now, replicated BeReal’s core timed photo feature and short-form video took off
Per ST data, from Jan’22-Dec’22, BeReal app MAUs soared an average of 45x YoY, per month, vs 16% for Reddit, 13% for Snapchat and -1% for Pinterest. That growth stabilized into 2023 and eventually dissipated towards the end of that year. From Nov’23-May’24, BeReal MAUs have declined an average of -2% YoY, per month, compared to +15% for Reddit, +10% for Snapchat and +4% for Pinterest
Although user growth and engagement growth have largely tapered off for BeReal, this acquisition will allow the app to tap into a plethora of product development resources and expertise at Voodoo to introduce new features and effectively monetize its user base. For Voodoo, this acquisition provides the publisher with an additional avenue to diversify its consumer offerings beyond gaming
Evaluating social media platforms on a market value per user basis (market value divided by MAUs) may help paint a broad picture of how the current market environment is valuing social media platforms. Per ST data, BeReal has one of the lowest market value per user ratios at $10.92 per user, compared to $38.58 for Snapchat, $73.68 for Pinterest and a staggering $133.59 for Reddit, which suggests that it may be more difficult to extract value from BeReal’s user base than other social media platforms
This may also suggest that the market is valuing social media apps quite highly at the moment and that BeReal’s vast difference in market value per user compared to other public social media companies may indicate that Voodoo was able to secure a bargain for the platform
ST data shows that BeReal eclipses its social media peers in user loyalty as more than half (54%) of BeReal users opened the app +15 days/month in May’24, compared to 52% on Snapchat, 33% on Reddit and 21% on Pinterest
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