All of those totally disposable BeReal photos you took at work over the last few years were apparently worth a lot of money to someone.
The self-titled “Gen Z social network” was acquired for €500 million (or roughly in the neighborhood of $541 million), per a Monday press release from its new parent company Voodoo. While Voodoo is primarily a publisher of mobile games, it also has a portfolio of apps like Wemoms, a social network for mothers. After this acquisition, BeReal is the most noteworthy name of the bunch.
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As part of this deal, BeReal CEO and co-founder Alexis Barreyat will oversee the transition to new management before leaving the company. It’s unclear if there will be any layoffs as a result of this purchase.
Mashable Light Speed
For those of us who are out of touch with the youth, BeReal blew up over the last few years due to its simple nature: Once a day, users are notified to take and post a photo of whatever they’re doing at that moment, within a two minute window. It’s changed somewhat over time (you can now post more than once per day, for starters), but the simple initial premise built up a userbase that Voodoo claims is north of 40 million active users.
Despite that success, this acquisition isn’t a big surprise. Its popularity was noticeably waning as early as a year and a half ago, and recent reports indicated BeReal was less than a year away from running out of cash entirely without some kind of lifeline.
