In May, I discussed the creation of several boutique social media apps in the past year as a response to the toxicity of mainstream platforms like Instagram or TikTok. One of the apps that I wanted to highlight — and keep an eye on — was BePerk, an app developed by Marvel actor Blondy Baruti.
In addition to his role as “Huhtar” in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Baruti has written a memoir entitled The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti: My Unlikely Journey from the Congo to Hollywood. According to an interview with ABC, he has largely invested his earnings from these projects to develop a new one: BePerk, an app which aims to “give control” back to the actual users of the app rather than to advertisers or investors.
The app debuted in mid-May, and marketed itself as a smaller, more personal social media app without the same culture of negativity and bullying behavior that flourishes on apps like Instagram or Facebook. It’s an intriguing concept — and one that’s hard to conceptualize, let alone pull off successfully. Some of the features that Baruti and his development team argue contributes to this healthier vision of social media use include:
Users decide how long each individual post is publicly viewable to others
Users can hide how many followers they have
Users can hide how many views an individual post gets and can hide comments made on one of their posts from their other followers
After ~15 minutes, the app will ask you whether you want to take a break from social media.
So, how is BePerk doing almost three months later, and why does it matter?
By the numbers
There isn’t a ton of information readily available yet on the app’s user numbers or revenue streams. The app has 165 ratings on the apple store’s website (at the time of writing this article). For comparison, Instagram has around 21.2 million ratings available on the app store. Instagram isn’t a great metric of BePerk’s success — the former has been around for more than a decade. If BePerk’s goal is to foster a sense of positivity and well-being in its users, maybe the rating is more helpful: the app has an average score of 4.6 out of 5 stars. Still, positivity and mental well-being is a qualitative goal — so maybe it doesn’t make sense, this early after its release, to measure BePerk based on how many people are talking about it. What they’re saying might be more important.
How do users feel about the app?
I reviewed all of the comments that were submitted to the app store from users of BePerk. The majority of comments were positive and mentioned many of the ideals Baruti does in his interviews: BePerk provides a refreshing alternative or break from mainstream social media apps, one with a lot more individual control over your content and the way you interact with others. Many people also reference the general positivity within the communities they’ve joined on BePerk, suggesting that the majority of users agree that the app fosters a healthier, more balanced social media environment.
There are some negative reviews of the app as well, the substantive of which tend to focus on issues with programming/design choice and the difficulty of deleting/deactivating the account should you decide BePerk isn’t a good fit. Additionally, for as many people who find the smaller size refreshing, others find the size of BePerk’s user base a substantial barrier to their enjoyment of the app. This includes both that their own social circles are not on the app, and that they find it difficult to search/explore for communities they might want to join. The first makes sense given the new nature of the app — but there are also comments about these issues from as early as 2018. It’s unclear whether Baruti and his development team have simply rebranded a preexisting app, and their social media account on Instagram (the irony of which hasn’t escaped me) isn’t particularly forthcoming about the specific nature or history of their app. That’s not unusual, given the size of BePerk and the other options that are available on the app store. But it does raise questions rather than answers about how long BePerk has been released, whether their emphasis on privacy extends to their own data practices, and the extent to which they’re receptive to user feedback.
Still, in looking at the average user experience on the app, it becomes clear that while there is definitely still room for improvement, BePerk has a ton of potential as a reprieve from larger social media platforms.
Whether it can build on the positive experiences it has created and extend them to larger social circles remains to be seen, but boutique apps — smaller-scale, more personal ways of producing and sharing photography content — may provide a long-term alternative for people who want to avoid the toxicity of more well-known apps but don’t want to detox from social media entirely.