The latest Meta experience borrows from BeReal and Snapchat’s core ideas

Meta is once again competing with its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that would allow users to post original photos that can only be viewed once. While Snapchat popularized the idea of ​​ephemeral content on social media, BeReal led the trend of publishing original, unedited content. And it looks like Meta, which is known for imitating startups and other tech companies, is doing it again with the new feature.

The social media company confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday that the feature was first spotted by a reverse engineer Alessandro PaluzziIt is an internal prototype and is not being tested externally.

The “sneak peek” appears to be an ephemeral version of the stories, which can be viewed for 24 hours. The photo shared via Peek will have to be taken with your camera for now, as you won’t be able to upload a photo from your camera roll, according to the screenshot shared by Paluzzi. Additionally, you won’t be able to edit the photo or add a filter, a concept that became popular with the advent of BeReal.

Peek seems to be a bit like Instagram Feature candid storiesWhich began its tests in 2022 to compete with BeReal. Although the feature was never rolled out to all users, it was essentially a version of BeReal. The feature will send notifications to people encouraging them to capture what they were doing at the moment and share it without editing the photo or adding a filter to it.

While Candid Stories encourages users to share original content at a specific time each day, Peek will let you do so on your own terms.

The flexibility can be more attractive to users who are interested in sharing original content but don’t want to do so based on a random timer. Instagram’s trend toward sharing original photos could appeal to users, especially since Reports She suggested that BeReal is losing ground (which she claims is not true).

The screenshot posted by Paluzzi suggests that Instagram sees Peek as a way to “share small moments with the people you love.” Instagram is likely hoping this feature will encourage users to share additional types of content on the app, as it requires another attempt to compete with BeReal.

As with any other internal prototype, it’s unknown when or if Instagram plans to roll out Peek publicly. Naturally, if Instagram releases this feature, there’s a chance it will look different or be renamed.