BeReal launched a feed of “real” celebrities

BeReal is finally launching a new feature – but it seems to go against the main purpose of the app. Instead of daily sharing photos with friends, now you can see what famous people are doing – athletes, artists and activists of the world.

BeReal, an app that advertises itself with the slogan “Your friends for real,” asks users to take a selfie every day at different times, which they then share with friends. The essence of the application is to randomly share with them what you are doing, whether it is boring lying in bed or sitting at the computer at work.

But now BeReal is adding strangers to the process. The new strip, titled RealPeople, is a “curated timeline of the world’s most interesting people” that features an “ever-changing collection” of notable people from around the world. The essence of the function is to show that celebrities are ordinary people just like us.

“RealPeople is not about influencing, gaining likes or comments, or promoting brands,” writes BeReal. “You won’t see photoshopped photos, product recommendations, or ads disguised as posts. The new tape is trying to show that we are more alike than we think.”

For now, the app is only testing this feature in the UK. You can access it by selecting the Discovery tab and then clicking RealPeople. From here, you can react to messages with RealMoji as you scroll through the timeline, as well as hide and report messages. BeReal also notes that through this form, you can suggest someone (or yourself) to the RealPeople timeline, although it is not known if BeReal has users already lined up for the new timeline.

After BeReal skyrocketed in popularity last summer, that hype has died down a bit. As Platformer’s Casey Newton points out, this is partly because the app hasn’t added any meaningful new features. Last month, the app began allowing users to take more than one photo per day, which, again, goes against the way the app started out.