Sources: BeReal is exploring adding paid features to avoid advertising; the app now has 15M DAUs, up from 10K in March 2021, and is now valued at ~$600M (Financial Times)

TechCrunch:
Sources: BeReal closed a $60M Series B earlier this year valuing it at ~$600M; the app has ~20M DAUs, up from 7.9M in July 2022  —  BeReal, the photo sharing app, has been a huge hit with Gen Z and beyond.  Now with other big social apps rushing to clone some of its no-frills ethos …

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
TikTok adds TikTok Now, a BeReal-like feature, to its app in the US, with daily prompts to capture a 10-second video or a photo using front and back cameras  —  TikTok launched a new feature today that is basically just a copy of BeReal, the buzzy French social app that’s been steadily gaining popularity.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: BeReal has passed 53M installs, its MAUs are up 2,254% since January, and ~9% of its active installs on Android opened the app every day in Q3  —  Gen Z social media app BeReal encourages its users to take a photo every day — a format designed to create a daily habit.

Eli Tan / CoinDesk:
Meta opens NFT sharing to Facebook users in the US and to all Instagram users in 100 countries, including the US, where digital collectibles are available  —  Users can now connect their crypto wallets to Instagram as part of the app’s new digital collectible feature, which the tech giant has been testing since May.

Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Ping, which helps remote workers and freelancers collect international payments in both fiat and crypto, has raised a $15M seed from investors including YC  —  If the global pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you could work from anywhere as long as you had a computer and good wireless signal.

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
Meta reports Instagram reached ~2B MAUs globally, up from 1B in 2018, and WhatsApp reached 2B+ DAUs  —  Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram now has 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, closing in on the 2.96 billion who use Facebook, in a sign of the social media giant’s shifting makeup.