The users of social networks including major Hollywood stars, last month when Instagram tested changes that flooded user profile homepages with recommended short videos called "reels" and content shared by other people they don't follow at all they "asked" the company to stop trying to be TikTok.

It was a reaction to Instagram's attempt to lure Gen Z members away from TikTok by mimicking some of that app's features.

An unusual concept of "friends"

Early platforms such as MySpace and Facebook were built on the odd notion of "friends," meant to reflect each person's actual social network. But the most popular among young people today, "Instagram" and "TikTok", are also global arenas for starting a new profession - influencertwo. Content is key, and algorithmically optimized virality is the metric that determines what you see.

It's this kind of app design that means the whole world can follow the evolution of a wildly popular makeup trend or join the campaign against a 20-year-old furniture designer from Brooklyn who misbehaved with girls on Tinder.

"Television of my generation"

The 23-year-old Deborah McKenzie from Aberdeen, Scotland says TikTok is like her generation's television. She says she and her friends don't post much, more browsing other people's content to fill their free time.

As the scale of Instagram and TikTok become more impersonal and less personal, a new generation of social media, including BeReal, Locket Widget, Yubo and Poparazzi, have seen an opportunity to prioritize the the intimacy.

"What we're seeing now is that Gen Z tastes are moving toward deeper and more personalized experiences," says Matt Moss, founder of Locket, a stripped-down app that lets close friends and family share photos that appear as an increased addition to the screen of other persons.

Moss originally created the app to keep in touch with his long-distance girlfriend while she studied, but he says that by the end of July, a billion photos had been shared on it. This explosion came after TikTok's viral moment late last year.

Another app that has had its share of viral moments is BeReal, launched in 2019 by French entrepreneurs Alexis Bareyat и Kevin Perot. BeReal asks its users to take a simultaneous photo from the front and rear cameras every day at a certain time, for a period of two minutes.

Introducing WidgetMojis, to keep your friends on your Home Screen when they react to your BeReal. pic.twitter.com/IUQcXrnbW9

—BeReal. (@BeReal_App) February 11, 2022

28 million downloads

Users can take photos later, but they can't see their friends' content until they post their own content. The idea is for users to capture what they're doing at the time no matter how unglamorous it is – to promote a more authentic relationship with their online friends.

BeReal is currently the #1 social networking app and growing rapidly. The vast majority of the 28 million downloads happened this year.

In addition to TikTok and Instagram beyond the original reach of social networks, the 20-year-old Christine Merrilis of New York says BeReal fills an unmet need to connect with friends throughout the day.

"I like to see what my friends are doing, especially during the summer when we're not in the same place and we're not in lectures," says Christine.

The new wave of these types of platforms supposedly solves another problem – the increasing pressure to work effectively, grow followers and become an influencer on TikTok and Instagram.

The 23-year-old Olivia Bamford from the English province of Derbyshire says that she stopped using Instagram because she thought that other people's content would always be better than her own.

BeReal. Your Friends, for Real. pic.twitter.com/I4gWuaXF4l

—BeReal. (@BeReal_App) December 9, 2020

The app could soon be worth more than $600 million

Instagram has justified its recent changes by saying it wants to help its creators reach a wider audience. By contrast, BeReal says it doesn't want to help people become influencers.

"It's not exactly a platform where you can build a following, but that's the point," Meriles told The Guardian.

Locket goes so far as to limit the number of people you can add – a far more "radical" difference than Instagram.

The inevitable backlash against BeReal's claims of authenticity quickly followed.

"The difference between BeReal and the social media giants is not BeReal's attitude to the truth, but the size and scope of its deceptions," wrote R. And Howley in the New Yorker.

Will thinking small ever lead to big results? Most of the apps mentioned say they have completely abandoned the attention-based economy, saying they will avoid ads for alternative business models.

Les gens craquent sur l'app. #BeReal pic.twitter.com/HiuqFtMasI

—BeReal. (@BeReal_App) February 5, 2021

Locket just received a $12,5 million investment led by OpenAI's Sam Altman. BeReal is reportedly on track to secure financing that will quadruple its value to more than $600 million.

Another question is, are these apps following a generational change or are they simply using the obvious truth that people want to share with their friends on the Internet? At the moment, most have no intention of replacing Instagram and TikTok.

"We love Instagram and TikTok, but they're not real competition in our space," says Poparazzi co-founder Alex Ma.

This reflects the greater fragmentation of the social media app market, where users visit different apps for different experiences.

It is difficult to predict whether these new social media applications will survive, let alone bring about major changes in the industry. Social apps like Clubhouse attracted huge numbers of users to audio chat rooms at the height of the pandemic, but have since faded into obscurity.